Forest fires have been burning all summer in the Northwest Territories. Did you think they would threaten Yellowknife?
We’ve been through this before. There’s only one road into Yellowknife, and in 2014, that road was cut off by fires. People were quite anxious about that at the time, but we got through it. The fire got quite close, but it didn’t breach the community boundaries.
We knew this fire was bad, but I don’t think anyone thought it would get this close. When you’re imagining evacuating the capital, it just didn’t seem like it was a possibility.
Was there a day when you said to yourself, ‘This is really serious, I might have to consider evacuating’?
It was last Friday. That’s when reality hit—the fires were very close. We knew if the wind changed it was going to get bad. That was at the same time that Hay River, Enterprise, Fort Smith and K’atl’odeeche First Nation were being evacuated. That’s every major population centre in the southern part of the territory—it’s almost like all of southwestern Ontario having to leave. That was a wake-up call that we needed to get our ducks in order. My wife and I made a plan and packed some bags and we were thinking the worst could happen. But it was very surreal when we got the actual evacuation order.
