Thousands of Yellowknife residents returned home this week after a wildfire evacuation order was lifted.
The nearby fire forced the city’s 20,000 residents out of their homes about three weeks ago.
Evacuees of Yellowknife, Ndilǫ, Dettah and the Ingraham Trail who were in Edmonton, Leduc and Calgary needed to check out of their hotel accommodations by Sunday, September 10.
Evacuees from the South Slave Region will continue to be accommodated. That area is still under an evacuation order.
Sunday was the last day for re-entry flights to Yellowknife from Edmonton and Calgary.
The highway leading up to Yellowknife was a welcome site for Kelsey Worth who is one of the thousands of residents forced to leave their homes.
“It was so great to be back and sleep in my own bed and just be able to relax and not worry about where I’m going to be in the next few days or if I have to move,” Worth said from her home in Yellowknife.
Worth, her husband and two kids have been living with family in High River since the fire forced them out.
“The worry level about our place at the very beginning was pretty high. We didn’t know if we were going to be coming back to anything,” Worth said.
On Thursday, they started the long drive home from High River to Yellowknife passing through communities by Hay River that were destroyed by fire.
“Coming into Yellowknife you can definitely see quite a bit of changes to the scenery with the fire breaks that are currently there. What I was really surprised to see was right by Alexandra Falls which was all decimated. We were just here three weeks ago taking pictures of Alexandra Falls, and now all the trees are gone,” Worth said.
This isn’t the first time Worth’s home has been affected by a natural disaster.
She was living near High River ten years ago when that community was devastated by the flooding.
“At my parent’s place, my grandpa and a bunch of friends, we had to dig a moat around their house to save it,” Worth recalled.
She lived in Cayley where they had extensive overland flooding.
“I’m starting to think I can pretty well survive a lot of chaos and everything going on around me,” she laughed.
Worth sees a positive side to the double disasters she’s lived through. She’s been able to help others navigate the paperwork and emotions that go with the trauma.
“I think I was able to calm a lot of people down. I had a few people who called me, and they were just in hysterics for one reason or another. I was able to talk to them and listen and they just basically vented what they needed to get out. We are in a really crappy situation and we need to get through it, but we need to get through it together,” Worth said.
On top of fires and floods, it was a pandemic that caused Worth and her family to move to Yellowknife to find work after being laid off in High River.
“Yellowknife is home. I love it here. The nature, the people. It’s a whole different lifestyle up here. Everyone told me you’re going to go north and you’re either going to hate it or you’re going to love it. There’s a huge sense of community up here. A huge sense of helping each other and even in all of this chaos, the people came together — the citizens of Yellowknife; of the Northwest Territories to help each other,” Worth said.
As of Sunday, there were 120 active fires in NWT.
The fire danger forecast was listed as extreme for Sunday, Monday and Tuesday in Yellowknife, Enterprise, Fort Smith and Fort Providence. The danger is also listed as extreme for Hay River for Monday and Tuesday.
“Southeast winds may cause the finger of fire furthest east from the Hay River within the K’átł’odeeche Reserve to grow to the west towards places like Riverwoods and other homes on the outskirts of the reserve. Our team will be doing everything we can to prevent that. The Town of Hay River, West Point First Nation, and surrounding areas continue to be threatened because of how close this fire is to the community and the lack of secured (extinguished) perimeter,” according to a wildfire update on the territorial webpage on Sunday.
The Behchoko/Yellowknife Fire was 15km northwest at nearest point (Yellowknife Municipal Boundary) as of Sunday.
As of 8:00 am Monday September 11, temporary support services on NWT highways will end.
“Now that most Yellowknife residents have returned home and traffic flow is expected to return to normal by the end of the weekend, the GNWT will be ending temporary support services that were put in place to provide for a safe re-entry to Yellowknife via NWT highways,” reads a statement from the territorial website.
As of 8:00 am Monday, September 11, 2023, the following changes will be in effect:
- Tow trucks will no longer be patrolling the highway and there will be no emergency fuel available.
- Temporary portable washrooms installed at Rae Access Road, North Arm Park, Fort Providence and the Deh Cho Bridge will no longer be available.
Plan your trip accordingly and obey all traffic signs and controls. For up-to-date information on re-entry to Yellowknife by road, visit: https://www.gov.nt.ca/en/public-safety/returning-yellowknife-road
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