Decision to evacuate communities a multi-layered process: SPSA

It has been a back-and-forth few weeks for people from the northern Saskatchewan village of La Loche.

At the beginning of May, people were evacuated from the village because of the threat of wildfires, many being moved all the way to Regina.

Mary Mavis-Sylvester had to leave La Loche at that time and said she’d been having some health issues.

“I was coughing (and) sneezing and I didn’t sleep all day and all night. I haven’t slept yet,” she said when she was in Regina.

A short time later, the evacuees were allowed to go home.

“People are happy to be home,” La Loche Mayor Georgina Jolibois said at that time.

“The local resources are doing a last-minute mop-up,” she said. “We do pray that we don’t have to face another situation.”

Then this week, the Aaron fire started moving closer to the community and, on Wednesday, people were evacuated from the village again.

Steve Roberts, the vice-president of operations with the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency, said making decisions around evacuations is a multi-layered process.

“We provide, as the agency, the most up-to-date technical information on the fire behaviour, the fire projections and even some of the expectations of what that’ll do to smoke,” explained Roberts.

He said the Saskatchewan Health Authority also provides information about health conditions related to smoke levels.

All of that is provided to the local leadership, whether it be a mayor, town council or band council, and they make the decisions about declaring a state of emergency or calling for an evacuation.

“Once those folks have made those decisions and evacuations are underway or have occurred, we also provide that same level of information on an ongoing basis so they can also make an informed decision on when to repatriate those individuals, and which ones, back to the community,” said Roberts.

As of Thursday morning, about 350 people had been evacuated from their home communities and were receiving support from the agency in another community. Of those, 81 people from La Loche were in Regina.