KPMG reaches final conclusions about Yellowknife’s wildfire response

The company tasked with reviewing the City of Yellowknife’s response to last summer’s wildfires has released its final report.

KPMG’s Leon Gaber, leading a Monday presentation on the report to city councillors, said a main finding was a lack of clarity over how roles and responsibilities were divided between the city and other agencies.

“That’s a really important finding that I think is really critical to address,” he said.

More: Read the report in full

“It will really help, I think, the city and the territory writ large with respect to being more prepared, being more effective in a future evacuation or significant response.”

Overall, KPMG identified 19 key strengths in the city’s emergency response and made 26 recommendations to address 35 areas for improvement.

Strengths highlighted in the report include the use of a local state of emergency to re-allocate resources to wildfire protection efforts, and the way public communication about the re-entry plan was better coordinated compared to communication about the evacuation process.

“Despite it being an unprecedented event, city staff, organizations involved in the evacuation itself all, I think, really rose to the challenge,” Gaber said.

Recommendations addressed the need for better cross-agency coordination, public communications, consideration of vulnerable people, emergency operations centre and continuity management, and evacuation planning and response.

An emergency management training plan should be developed for city staff, as should a detailed wildfire evacuation plan, KPMG concluded. A formal decision-making process for shared responsibilities with the NWT government should be established, as should a city position coordinating with local organizations that support vulnerable people during emergencies.

Outgoing city manager Sheila Bassi-Kellett said she found the review process “absolutely invaluable.”

“We’ve spent a lot of time through this process reflecting on the actions taken last summer,” she said. “I still fully believe that at the time, we made the best decisions we could about our response with the information that we had at the time.”

Bassi-Kellett said the city had already begun updating its evacuation plan, which she said should be complete within the next two weeks. She said municipal staff would provide an update to council on work to implement the report’s recommendations in the fall.

At the territorial level, two reviews have been planned related to last year’s wildfire season.

The Department of Executive and Indigenous Affairs announced last month it had awarded a contract to Transitional Solutions Inc to review the territory’s emergency response. The final report is expected to be released in December.

A contractor is midway through a separate review of how the Department of Environment and Climate Change managed wildfires last year.

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