There were no injuries reported after a fire on Thursday evening destroyed a shop building near residences at Prelude Lake West, north of Yellowknife.
The City of Yellowknife said firefighters were called to the Ingraham Trail property at 9:45pm. The building had been evacuated, and both the city and the territory’s fire marshal said nobody was known to have been hurt.
Firefighters spent 90 minutes at the scene, the city said, working to minimize the risk to other buildings in the area.
By the time firefighters arrived, the shop building was already fully engulfed and beyond rescue, fire marshal Chucker Dewar said on Friday.
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Dewar said an investigator had been dispatched to the scene. There was no immediate word regarding a possible cause.
The fire marshal urged residents to take care in the extreme cold of the coming days, saying the conditions would place strain on equipment.
The City of Yellowknife’s provision of fire service on the Ingraham Trail is due to end at the start of April.
In September, city councillors voted five to four in favour of ceasing the service, which has been informally offered to trail residents for decades but which City Hall said was putting the municipality’s own residents at risk.
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Sheila Bassi-Kellett, Yellowknife’s senior administrator, has said there is a risk both that the fire division could be too thinly stretched and that Ingraham Trail residents would unduly rely “on a service we can’t always provide.”
It’s not clear what kind of service, if any, will fill the void once Yellowknife pulls out.
In October, territorial minister responsible Paulie Chinna said the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs was “in conversation with the City of Yellowknife” and had established a working group.
