As most Flin Flonners enter their fourth week evacuated from the north, information is trickling out the plan to get people home. There’s still no confirmed date for the return, but how the City and various fire crews plan to do it is coming into focus.
After battling the largest forest fire in Manitoba’s history for weeks, firefighters are now not the only people allowed back.
Critical workers with businesses and the City of Flin Flon are now making their way back home, working around the clock to make Flin Flon’s unwanted spring break over as soon as possible.
The City got about 5,300 people out in a matter of hours, either on buses or their own vehicles, when the call came down May 28, including about 600 people who used buses from Flin Flon to get out.
Sources tell The Reminder that the return to home plan may start as early as this weekend or early next week, but no times or dates have been confirmed.
Deputy mayor Alison Dallas-Funk has been the public face of the City’s efforts, sharing videos most nights detailing the day's events and efforts to both combat the fires and help the town continue on. The time has been a whirlwind for all involved, including Dallas-Funk - she said having to balance being an elected leader and making key decisions with being a Flin Flonner can be tough.
“It’s difficult for people to understand that yes, you’re an elected official and yes, you are leading the community, but alongside that, you’re also a community member. You’re still hurting for your community in the process of making difficult decisions - you can be affected yourself,” she said. Dallas-Funk said she had lost a family cabin near Denare Beach when the fire sped through the area two weeks ago, but her home in Flin Flon is still intact.
“The tremendous courage of everybody at Denare Beach has been inspiring - their attitude and their strength, it’s really what northerners are about.”
Dallas-Funk and Judy Eagle are the sole Flin Flon councillors still in Flin Flon - everybody else has left town and is staying with family, while Eagle has made runs around Flin Flon to find and feed people’s left-behind pets.
Keeping as many people away from the area as possible was key to the plan for fighting the fire, Dallas-Funk said.
“Unless you had a very specific job, we didn’t want anybody to come back because we have to adhere to the same rules as everybody else in the evacuation order. There’s only two of us from council here currently and it’s just in the last few days where operation and work staff started to come in.”
The plan
The first stages of the plan began in earnest last week, with the Office of the Fire Commissioner, Manitoba Emergency Management Organization (EMO), the provincial health ministry and others coming in to town to determine if Flin Flon was safe for limited numbers of people to enter. That call was made last week, with the groups giving the go-ahead for what comes next.
The current stage will see bigger groups of people coming back up north, including about 15 workers with the City of Flin Flon, most of whom are looking after burst pipes, leaks, garbage pickup and other duties. Firefighters, volunteers from across Manitoba, Office of Fire Commissioner, Manitoba Wildfire Service and a large contingent of Parks Canada firefighters are still plugging away, with help coming with crews from both the U.S. and Europe. Some teams will be switching out June 19 at the end of a two-week shift.
The bigger groups include workers at different “critical businesses”, as Dallas-Funk calls them - grocery stores, gas and fuel stations, banks, pharmacies, food services and restaurants and the like.
“Those are the businesses that we need - if we bring people back, what kind of services do we need as a community to operate?” she said.
“There’s I think 17 businesses that we’ve identified on that first list, along with any business that allowed us to enter during the evacuation for supplies when nobody was in the community. We have a number of businesses that are extremely community minded and really opened up their doors for the fire crews, saying ‘if you need something, please go and get it.’” Dallas-Funk tipped her hat specifically to Canadian Tire and the North of 53 Consumer’s Co-op for allowing City crews to grab what they needed from each store.
Food has been prepared for firefighters and first responders by a team including Dan and Dawn Hlady from Chicken Chef and a skeleton crew - many of the firefighters are camping out at or near Bakers Narrows, staying near fire locations for short rests, staying out on islands and having supplies sent out on boats. Others are staying at the Victoria Inn building in town.
“All of the decisions are being run through incident command - it’s one operating unit with all of those different organizations. The municipality is in there and the EMO is in there as well. All of those moving parts are one command centre that is has a chain of command,” said Dallas-Funk.
“Every day, multiple times a day, all of that centre is meeting to move around those moving parts to see where the crews need to go, what logistics they need.”
Guidelines right now include a curfew for all non-emergency personnel - people are asked to stay away from public from 8 p.m. to 7 a.m.. The workers coming in for different businesses cannot bring their kids, each one must have their own vehicle and cell phone and is asked to bring with them about a week’s worth of food and water. If the situation worsens, all must be able and willing to evacuate the area too.
“The guidelines that are in place are only for this two or three days when community re-enters,” said Dallas-Funk.
“All of this is in place because there’s still an active fire. Our resources are really on that fire line and if something flares up or if we had to leave suddenly, we need to know that we can evacuate people fast and that the RCMP are aware of where everybody is.”
The essential businesses include services and places which can assist firefighters, including restaurants, stores and others.
“We needed food for our people. We need fuel. We need gas if you run on propane. We need a bank. We need a pharmacy as well, so that has been taken care of and is starting. Then comes the next phase,” said Dallas-Funk.
“The next phase would look like the rest of the businesses and more people being involved, then from there we look to community. What now kind of health services do we have? What's the fire look like? Then we make the decisions from there and it's moving faster.”
Health
One of the biggest hurdles remaining before getting Flin Flonners back is having a working hospital.
With personnel either evacuated from the area, off fighting the fires or assisting on the ground, few health workers have remained fully on the job in Flin Flon, even at Flin Flon General Hospital (FFGH). Many of the essential workers who came back north are health workers, allowing some level of medical care in town.
“It at least gives us an ER and a doctor and some nurses and primary care. Right now, all we have is an ambulance and with the crews on both sides of the border - we're the hub too. It's not just Flin Flon - we have to think about Denare Beach, Creighton, ourselves, Sherridon and Cranberry. Our hospital services all those people. If we just said, ‘Yeah, everybody come home right now’ and something happened, we would have to take that one ambulance that we have and have it taken to The Pas,” said Dallas-Funk.
A spokesperson with the NHR said that reopening Flin Flon’s medical system and hospital would be a phased-in project of its own.
“The planning for Flin Flon General Hospital re-opening is a phased approach. The first phase will be the emergency department and Shared Health Emergency Medical Services and Patient Transport (ambulance services) reestablished and staffed to support the first responders who are currently in the community,” said the spokesperson.
“The initial step is for professionals to complete environmental testing of health region facilities. This work is planned to take place this week.”
“You can imagine when you completely shut down a hospital the size of ours, what that looks like to restart it. It's not just walk in and turn the lights on. They have protocols that they have to follow,” said Dallas-Funk.
One of the first protocols that must be acted on for health is bringing in a Shared Health assessment crew, whose job it is to look over Flin Flon General Hospital and see if the fire has damaged the centre. After a clean bill of health, the inspectors will be heading through the hospital, examining equipment and surveying any damage.
“They do the assessment for air quality, see if instrumentation doesn't need to be recalibrated, things like that,” said Dallas-Funk. The team, which can take weeks to arrive in different areas, showed up in town Tuesday.
"Once that's done, then they can bring in people to clean or make sure everything's okay, then their staff can come in. We've kind of fast tracked that and we're fortunate enough that our hospital ventilation and areas are actually too, because the ER is new and it’s considered its own building.”
Dallas-Funk also said that hospital staff right now are being used to ensure no one on the front line gets hurt.
“It's not necessarily just about community that is a way or coming back in. It's about that big command centre and fire team that is currently fighting the fires and there is approximately 150 of them right now, so we need to make sure that they're safe,” she said.
From there, work will advance, more NHR employees will get the call to come in and operations will eventually hit normal levels - that will include bringing back people who have been moved from the Flin Flon Personal Care Home or the Northern Lights Manor.
“The process of moving residents of the Personal Care Home and Northern Lights Manor back to their home facilities in Flin Flon will involve our partners, Shared Health Emergency Medical Services and Patient Transport. The planning is done on an individual basis to best meet the residents' medical needs and safety criteria for their journey,” said an NHR spokesperson.
Much like most of the Flin Flon effort, there isn’t a firm date or time set for when people might come home - only that people hope it happens soon.
“There is no definitive timeline for full capacity at the Flin Flon facilities, as this is a dynamic situation that has variables changing daily. The environmental assessments will guide the extent of intervention needed for the phased opening,” said the NHR spokesperson.
“The leadership team is in constant communication with Manitoba’s Emergency Management Organization, Manitoba Wildfire Services, the Ministry of Health and leadership from the City of Flin Flon to ensure we know when it’s safe to re-enter the community.”
Return home
In the meantime, much still needs to go right to get Flin Flonners back home. The current evacuation and evaluation team is experienced in matters like these - Dallas-Funk heaped praise on the team, which has members who have served during fires and natural disasters all over North America.
“There's a lot of organizations and consultants and people that have great qualifications when it comes to wildfire and community safety. A large part of this team has worked on the Jasper fires, on Fort Mac. The consultant that we brought in for re-entry and what that plan looked like and is best and safe for the community - he actually worked during Hurricane Katrina. We are surrounded by some really great people that are very experienced in wildfire and community evacuation,” she said.
“That being said, it is our job to take the information they're giving us and try to make the best decision for our community when it comes to safety and re-entry. That's what we're trying to do.”
The City is now planning to temporarily convert the Whitney Forum into a sort of makeshift welcoming centre where people can get things they may need - access to health care, mental health services, hygiene kits and cleaning products, even food or help accessing insurance or assistance programs.
It’s still too early to give an exact date, but one is more likely to come later this week after the assessments are done - if all goes well, people may be able to return as early as next week. If not, there’s no telling how long it may take.
“We don't want to put people in harm's way or make them have to evacuate again. That being said, we can't sit here for two months waiting for every single hotspot to be put out. We recognize that this is just the reality of where we live,” said Dallas-Funk.
“We are moving in a better direction, especially with having a plan to open that is sooner than later. We feel extremely positive about that.”
Dallas-Funk said that she is worried about the financial and mental toll the evacuation period could take on people.
“I know I'm concerned for people that are away. It's mentally, physically, emotionally, financially draining on our community. It doesn't matter where you are and who you are. This is emotionally just weighing and taxing on people,” said Dallas-Funk.
“You're not in your community. You don't know what's going on, you can't see your homes and so I can only sympathize and empathize and try to push us as hard as we can to make this happen as fast as we can.”
Condition one
Office of Fire Commissioner/Emergency Management Organization/Manitoba health ministry deem community safe for limited entry
Took place last week
Condition two
Small crews of essential City works and operations (water, sewer, garbage collection from pre-evacuation)
Manitoba Hydro/SaskPower/SaskTel crews enter to work
Critical businesses (grocery stores, fuel depots/gas stations, pharmacies, banks, etc.)
Basic health care (Flin Flon General Hospital, emergency department, EMS/ambulance)
Environmental assessments to make sure community is safe (including Officer of the Fire Commissioner, Manitoba Wildfire Service/Sask. Public Safety Agency, Northern Health Region)
Access to police and firefighting (firefighters available for any non-forest fire emergencies)
Timeline ongoing (began last weekend, likely to continue throughout this week)
Condition three
Moving in more essential personnel with City and others
More NHR/Flin Flon General Hospital/Primary Health Centre staff
Further staffing at critical businesses
Further approvals from incident command/Emergency Management Organization
Timeline occurring over next 7 days (approximately)
Condition four
Full return of all residents for Flin Flon/Creighton/Denare Beach
Full operation at Flin Flon General Hospital and other locations
Moving patients back to Flin Flon General Hospital/residents to Flin Flon Personal Care Home/Northern Lights Manor
Full restoration of power and services within communities where possible
Timeline unknown (potentially 7-14 days from June 16, barring changes with fire/supply issues)
