KENORA – Living in a fire-prone community can be emotionally difficult, Wabaseemoong Chief Waylon Scott said Sunday as nearly all of his community stayed in hotels hundreds of kilometres away.
Wabaseemong Independent Nations, approximately 120 kilometres northwest of Kenora and 13 kilometres east of Manitoba, was evacuated last week as wildfires raged near the Treaty 3 community.
More than 800 Wabaseemoong residents have been evacuated to Niagara Falls and are staying in hotels near each other, Scott told reporters in an online media scrum on Sunday.
Others are staying in Kenora and Winnipeg, he said.
Evacuating everyone to Kenora wasn’t an option as the city on the Lake of the Woods doesn’t have the hotel capacity to accommodate all of Wabaseemoong’s on-reserve members, he explained.
Thunder Bay was unavailable as a destination because that city is hosting evacuees from other communities, he added.
Scott said this year’s evacuation went more smoothly than in 2021, when the First Nation had only about three days to evacuate residents.
This time around, he added, some people took the initiative to evacuate on their own when they could see “100-foot flames” from their homes.
“It put a little panic, or put a lot of panic, on a lot of community members,” Scott said.
“It was scary at times,” he said. “Especially hearing the fire. You could actually hear the roar of the fire from across the river.
“So I’m glad that we were able to get everyone out within three or four days, versus the 2021 evacuation that took us five or six days to get everyone out.”
Scott said this is Wabaseemoong’s third evacuation since he became chief in 2019.
Having to evacuate repeatedly “takes a toll on everyone,” he remarked, saying it’s like post-traumatic stress disorder for some community members.
People are “on the edge of their seats” every spring as the fire season starts, he said.
Kenora Chiefs Advisory communications manager Abbie Siroishka said Wabaseemoong members have shown “strength and resilience” in the face of the wildlands fires and the evacuation.
As of Sunday morning there are “17 or 18” Wabaseemoong members on the reserve, Scott said, adding that some of them are staff maintaining infrastructure.
There has been no property damage and no medical incident directly related to the fires, the chief said.
He said a Kenora non-profit group has taken some dogs out of the community, and some of the community members still in Wabaseemoong are feeding dogs that remain there.
A news release from the First Nation said it “has established teams at each evacuation site” to provide services to members while the evacuation is ongoing.
An update from Ontario’s Aviation, Forest Fire and Emergency Services on Saturday evening said the wildfire dubbed Kenora 20, west of Wabaseemoong, was 31,000 hectares in size at the time and not under control.
The Kenora 14 fire north of Wabseemoong was sized at 1,600 hectares and also considered not under control.
Scott said a three-hectare breakaway blaze from the Kenora 20 fire was about 1.3 kilometres from his community as of Sunday morning.
“There remains no access to the community, and we cannot stress enough how dangerous it is to try and go to Wabaseemoong currently,” the First Nation’s news release said.
“There are barriers established at the community side access roads, so anyone trying to enter will be asked to turn around.”
