With smoke on their doorstep, Northern Ontario First Nation forest fire evacuees find refuge in GTA

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This article was published 24/07/2021 (1287 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As a forest fire loomed on their doorstep, members of the Cat Lake First Nation decided late Saturday night that no further evacuations from the remote northern Ontario community would be necessary after 200 of their members already found refuge in the GTA.

“There’s a number of factors,” Derek Spence, evacuation coordinator for the small community 230 kilometres north of Dryden, said. “If we leave our community, we’re afraid they’re gonna let it burn. It has cooled down, the rain we got the other day has slowed it down a significant amount. If it does start again and we leave the community, no one will be here.”

Eight kilometres to the west of Cat Lake, the fire dubbed Sioux Lookout 60 has grown to 1,487 hectares, prompted the evacuation of 200 of the nearly 500 members of the First Nation. Those people flew into Pearson International Airport Friday and were taken to find accommodations in Peel Region and in Mississauga.

In all, nearly 3,000 people have been evacuated from communities in the northwestern region of Ontario as 138 active fires burn, encouraged by long periods of extremely warm weather and dry conditions. Those evacuations have, so far, been precautionary measures due to smoke.

As well as the Cat Lake evacuations, Poplar Hill First Nation and Deer Lake First Nation evacuated 647 and 898 people, respectively. Pikangikum First Nation evacuated 1,096 before putting its evacuation on hold, and North Spirit Lake First Nation evacuated 99 of its members.

Those communities all lie around 250 kilometres north of Kenora, and about 100 north of Woodland Caribou Provincial Park, where the largest of the northwestern Ontario fires — Kenora 51 at 139,116 hectares — burns.

Most of their evacuees have been received in northern towns, like Kenora, Dryden and Thunder Bay, while a few — like the Cat Lake evacuees — have been taken further south to the GTA.

In Cat Lake, as the evacuation deliberations continue, the fire prompting their concern has stalled.

“Right now, the fire is displaying limited activity in recent days due to weather conditions. Overnight, it did receive five millimetres of rain,” said Aviation Forest Fires and Emergency Services Fire Information Officer Jonathan Scott from Dryden.

He said six firefighting crews had been assigned to the fire threatening Cat Lake, with another two on the way in the near future.

“Currently the behaviour is not very active, because it did get rain. And they’ve been suppressing the fire as well.”

In the GTA, Cat Lake evacuees were accommodated by Peel Region and the City of Mississauga, although officials were thin on detail, citing privacy concerns.

“The ministry can confirm that about 200 evacuees from Cat Lake First Nation were evacuated to Mississauga and Peel Region over the past two days due to forest fire activity in northwestern Ontario,” said the Solicitor General’s spokesperson Andrew Morrison.

“The ministry cannot speculate as to the number of potential evacuees due to the fluid nature of evacuation and firefighting efforts.”

“The Region is engaged in the work, providing public health and human services supports to evacuees. Due to the vulnerable population we are supporting, details related to those supports cannot be disclosed, however, we are in regular contact with them to ensure they are receiving the care and support they need,” added Peel Region spokesperson Genevieve Ricciardella in a statement.