Northern airlines pivot to help with evacuations, food supply and wildfire operations

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The N.W.T. government says it's working to ensure food and other key goods keep flowing to remote communities amid the ongoing wildfires and evacuations of key regional hubs. 

Wildfires have triggered evacuation orders in the capital city of Yellowknife, as well as the communities of Ndilo, Dettah, Fort Smith, Enterprise, Hay River, Kátł'odeeche First Nation, Kakisa and Jean Marie River.

In Fort Resolution, for example, about 120 kilometres east of Hay River, food and fuel will be brought in on Monday, said Shane Thompson, minister of Municipal and Community Affairs, during the latest N.W.T. wildfire update on Saturday night.

While the road entering Fort Resolution remains open, the highway that links the hamlet to Hay River and the south is closed due to the wildfires, according to the N.W.T. Highways map as of Sunday afternoon. 

"We're still trying to get the food in right now to not only Yellowknife for essential services and the crews that are fighting the fire but also to the other communities that might need it," Thompson said. 

If further roads need to be closed because of wildfires, planes will be used, he said. 

"We're working on that contingency plan right now." 

Some airlines offering scheduled passenger flights have already shifted to supporting emergency efforts — even as some of their own staff have left the territory. 

"All aircraft have been dedicated to the more urgent needs," said Chris Reynolds, president of Air Tindi, noting that activity at the Yellowknife airport is limited to evacuations, medevacs, and firefighting and military activity. 

Air Tindi has largely suspended passenger flights to focus on evacuations for private businesses, getting supplies to frontline workers staying in the territory, standing by in case fire crews need to be urgently moved out, and delivering food to fly-in communities north of Yellowknife, Reynolds said. 

"Food security is a big one," he said.

"When Yellowknife's shut down, you're definitely checking the stock of the grocery store. So the regular [supply] flights have been happening."

Arctic Co-operatives Ltd., which is serviced by Air Tindi at one of its N.W.T. member stores, said Saturday it was not aware of any major food disruptions in the North in the past few days. Yellowknife is a hub serving the Kitikmeot region of Nunavut and the other Co-op communities up the Mackenzie Valley. 

Air Tindi started flying out 175 of its own employees, plus their families and pets, on Wednesday, the same day the territorial government ordered all Yellowknife residents to evacuate by noon Friday, Reynolds said. Other employees drove south.

"It was one of those things where, how can a flight crew concentrate on flying an airplane, or the aircraft mechanic concentrate on fixing an airplane, if they're worried about their families at the same time, right?" 

About 15 Air Tindi workers remain based in Yellowknife — "definitely a skeleton crew," Reynolds said. 

Moving inmates south

Buffalo Airways is also working to keep food going to communities and mines, said Sandy MacPherson, the airline's manager of business development. 

Otherwise, the company is helping with evacuations, frontline supply efforts (like providing food to Yellowknife's Explorer Hotel for essential worker meals) and fighting fires using its own water bombers.

Buffalo has also carried out some "niche" operations during the recent evacuations, Reynolds said.

That includes moving inmates last week from the Fort Smith Correctional Complex to the jail in Yellowknife due to the fire threatening Fort Smith. When the capital itself later came under threat, 85 adult inmates were flown down to Alberta, according to the Department of Justice.

On Friday, Buffalo flew a charter transporting animals from the N.W.T. SPCA animal shelter in Yellowknife to Edmonton. 

The company was then flooded with calls to bring equipment such as sprinklers up to Yellowknife on its return trip, MacPherson said.

"We were able to make sure that leg, [which] would have been an empty leg back north, was full of essential cargo."