Wildfire evacuation review would look at 'the good, bad and ugly,' says Yellowknife mayor

Yellowknife city council spent most of Monday afternoon talking about a possible review of the city's response to the wildfire emergency that prompted last month's evacuation. 

City officials said any such review would not assess the performance of decision-makers, but would look at challenges the city faced and determine what needs to be done now, and in the long-term, to better prepare the city for a future emergency.

Mayor Rebecca Alty spoke with Marc Winkler on The Trailbreaker about that meeting, and what the city hopes to gain from an independent review. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Tell us more about what, specifically, this review would look at?

It's not about laying blame and all that stuff, but it is looking at all the decisions that were made and what should have happened, what did happen, what were best practices that we should continue and what are areas for improvement.

There's at least 20 points in the scope of work that the consultants will have to look at. You know, comparing what happens in Yellowknife to the United Nations Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction or the Canadian Standards Association or the ... various guidelines, standards, best practices. So I did just want to make sure it's clear that that we are actually looking at all our our decisions and what did happen and what should have happened.

It does sound very broad, but what are some of your goals with the potential review?

We're looking at the good, the bad and the ugly and so really looking at the city's current emergency preparedness, and our management, and our response. Here in the Northwest Territories we have legislation that we have to follow. There's the N.W.T. emergency plan that outlines responsibilities for municipalities and the territorial governments. And looking at our emergency plan, our evacuation framework and looking at how decisions were made on how to call a local state of emergency. It is about looking at everything that we did and making recommendations to improve. 

We're not the first community to have ever evacuated. An after-action review is what happened after every major incident. So if you look at Fort McMurray, Alta., they did the same. They did an after-action assessment and so the municipality did one and the province did one and it came out with a bunch of different recommendations. And even in reading their documents I'm like, 'Oh, that'd be good.'

We've got a basic emergency management preparedness but we need to bump it up to be more robust, more fulsome and that does mean investing more in emergency management preparedness in the future.

I'm looking forward to the full review. I'm really looking forward to seeing the recommendations and then working to get those implemented.

So at the end of it, would that lead to a more detailed evacuation plan for the future?

One of the things in the scope of the after-action review is that we're requesting that the consultant propose recommendations for a community-based evacuation plan that recognizes the northern remote and limited means of egress for our community. They have to look at our legislative authority, framework, territorial agreements, risk management, decision making resources, etc.

If you take a look around the country ... a lot of the evacuation plans are quite simple. It is similar to what Yellowknife has. And so we are looking for the consultant to provide recommendations. Do we need a more robust plan? How do we communicate this more effectively with the public? Because if the public thinks that we don't have one, then that's the same as not having one. And so we need recommendations from the consultants. They're the subject matter experts. We want them to look across the country. We want to look outside the country.

Canada is not the only one that has wildfires or even when I looked at Halifax, they have, before hurricane season information for residents. 'Hey, hurricane season is upon us, remember XYZ.' You know? Maybe that's something that we need to include, or a way to prepare better in the future.

Will [the review] tell us, 'Yes, the authorities made the right call to evacuate at this particular time?'

There's two things. So the city is going to do our after-action review, which is reviewing all the actions for the city and the GNWT [Government of Northwest Territories]. I've heard Minister Shane Thompson on your show say that the GNWT is also going to do an after-action assessment. I don't know if they'll be doing a third party. I do encourage them.

I hope they will because I think we need a really robust and third party independent review as well. The territorial government was the one that made the call on the evacuation order.

However, one of the things we are in our our after-action review is asking them to look at the conditions for which Environment and Climate Change (ECC) assign evacuation orders for wildfires and how that advice informs the action of the city. So it wouldn't say did you make the right call or the wrong call, but, you know, reviewing it so that we have a a better understanding in the future on the conditions that ECC would assign evacuation orders. Or make recommendations to assign an evacuation order and how that advice informs our actions.

Do you think that the public would like to know whether a independent third party believes that the correct call was made regarding the evacuation?

I don't know if anybody would ever make the same call. It's kind of like lawyers. You put a whole bunch of lawyers in the room and everybody will come out with a different decision. I haven't seen other after-action reviews weigh in on whether that was the right call or the wrong call. I could be wrong. It could be in reports on Fort Mac. I think it's more about making sure that your decision making's robust and improving it in the future.

Coun. Tom McLennan said the information arising from the review should be made public, without being vetted by the city first. Can you say whether that's the plan?

So how reviews happen is we hire the third-party consultant. They do the review. They engage with stakeholders. They write the report. Generally reports are reviewed by staff just to make sure that information is correct. However, the consultant doesn't hand the pen over and say, 'Hey, you know, take over and write the report.' If the consultant doesn't agree that that's a factual change. I've reviewed reports and then it said Oct. 16 and it should have said Aug. 16 or something ... that would be something a consultant would change. Then the review will be brought forward. Council requests an interim report back to council, so that would be publicly at our governance and priorities committee meeting and then they would be doing the final report to council.

I sit on the audit committee too, and I see it very similar to the way that the audit works. The auditors and city staff work together. City staff have to provide information to the auditors. They do review the report just to say like if they think that anything is factually wrong in the figures, but they don't get free rein to rewrite the the financial statements. The auditors don't allow that. And then during our audit committee, one of the first questions we ask is did you run into any issues and, if there was, auditors do flag that. Like staff and us had a disagreement on X way to calculate and this is the way that we've proceeded. So I am comfortable. These are big companies. They're not going to put their logo and their name on the line if their recommendations have been modified. 

I have faith in the process, and this is the process that's been used.

We're not a snowflake. We're not the first community to evacuate. Same thing happened in Fort Mac, same thing happened in Slave Lake. KPMG happened to get the contracts in both of those cases. They work with staff to to formulate the report and then they release it publicly.