New wildfire modelling software, more mental health support for firefighters, and better systems for combating misinformation are among the dozens of recommendations included in a new report looking at how the N.W.T. government dealt with last summer’s unprecedented and catastrophic wildfires in the territory.
The report, released Wednesday, is based on a third-party review commissioned by the territorial government last year.
Calgary-based consulting firm MNP was hired to do the review which focused on the department of Environment and Climate Change’s (ECC) preparedness and response to the 2023 wildfire season. It’s one of two reviews commissioned by the territory; the other, which looks at the government’s overall response, is expected later this year.
The territorial government opted for the third-party reviews but not a public inquiry into the 2023 wildfire response, despite MLAs voting in favour of an inquiry last winter.
MNP’s 212-page report is based on interviews with territorial government staff, municipal authorities and Indigenous communities, as well as analyses of ECC policies and procedures related to wildfire. The review did not focus on the 19 community evacuations or the communications around those evacuations.
The 2023 wildfire season in the N.W.T., and across Canada, was unlike any before it. Prolonged hot, dry conditions saw 306 wildfires burn more than 3.4 million hectares across the N.W.T. There were 138 temperature records broken in the territory in May 2023 alone.
One firefighter died on the job, near Fort Liard in July of that year. In Enterprise, N.W.T., 80 per cent of the community was destroyed. The territory was under a state of emergency from mid-August until early October.
“The severity and challenges of the unprecedented wildfire season necessitated an independent third-party review,” reads the MNP report.
“Despite efforts by ECC and emergency responders, who typically manage well and succeed under average wildfire conditions, the multiple concurrent wildfires, compounded by similar challenges in other jurisdictions, highlighted the limitations of the current wildfire management program to cope with the unprecedented conditions.”
Staffing, skills, equipment and misinformation
The report found that the department struggled with a list of things as it responded to the fires, including inadequate staffing and skills training, and “reliance on retired personnel who may not meet current fitness standards or be up to date with modern fire science.”
It also found the division of some responsibilities between jurisdictions was unclear, including between municipalities and Indigenous governments, and that there was a lack of clarity around who should stay behind in evacuated communities.
“This was especially true in Fort Smith when many ECC employees did not evacuate so that they could continue coordinating delivering fire operations. When the communications infrastructure was compromised, they reported feeling highly vulnerable because they had no way of knowing how close the fire was to the community,” the report reads.
There were also problems with equipment management and tracking during the season.
“Some [review] participants shared accounts of pumps, hoses and other equipment being transferred to locations in different regions without proper procedures, equipment being left in the field in unknown locations after suppression activity ended, and equipment in the field being stolen or damaged by community members,” the report reads.
The document also highlights concerns with the department’s incident command system (ICS), which is intended to be a unified system to co-ordinate wildfire response. In July and August 2023, there were frequent staff departures from the ICS, the report says.
Those departures “created challenges with communications, the coordination of wildfire response strategies, and the deployment of resources,” the report reads, while also noting that none of those things were “directly correlated to outcomes such as the loss of structures or the loss of a fire line.”
Some people told MNP they had been appointed to key decision-making roles, such as incident command, without adequate training.
“In a smaller number of cases, participants stated that many people were overwhelmed by a rapidly changing situation and system structures ‘fell apart,'” the report reads.
The department also struggled at times with a lack of clarity around how to counter misinformation circulating online.
Such misinformation “contributed to confusion and increased public safety risks,” the report states.
“While social media was an effective tool for ECC to keep the public informed, it was also used by the public to distribute misinformation. Significant effort was expended by ECC’s communications team to respond to and correct misinformation.”
The review also highlighted a gap affecting the territory’s wildfire-behaviour modelling capabilities for 2024, as the territory has stopped using wildfire modelling software that it had in 2022 and 2023, “in part due to cost increases.”
“It is unclear what ECC’s immediate next steps are regarding future wildfire behaviour,” the report states.
Recommendations and ‘opportunities for improvement’
The report includes 25 recommendations for immediate action, as well as 17 “opportunities for improvement” over the next one to three years.
Some of the recommendations include:
- Improvements to wildfire behaviour-monitoring, including new software.
- Emphasize recruitment and retention of firefighters and add a minimum of two more firefighter crews “to better cope with the frequency of extreme weather events.”
- Expand culturally-appropriate mental health services for firefighters and wildfire management team members.
- Consider starting fire crews earlier in the season.
- Create standard operating procedures for accessing otherwise-engaged aircraft and pilots as needed.
- Provide more incident command system training for more ECC and other N.W.T. government employees.
- Modernize the after-action review system, to ensure such reviews are done.
- Clarify which government departments are responsible for responding to different types of misinformation.
- Better outline jurisdictional responsibilities between ECC, municipalities and Indigenous governments.
- Consolidate the territory’s wildfire management program across regions, with a consolidated budget and financial reporting structure.
N.W.T. government officials are holding a news conference on Wednesday at noon, to discuss the review’s findings and recommendations.
Speaking at the news conference will be ECC Minister Jay Macdonald, ECC’s deputy minister Erin Kelly, ECC’s director of Forest Management Mike Gravel and ECC manager of wildfire prevention and mitigation Mike Westwick, among others.