Municipal leaders push for dedicated evacuation centres in Enterprise, N.W.T., and High Level, Alta.

Municipal leaders in Enterprise, N.W.T., and High Level, Alta., are pushing for better emergency preparedness when it comes to flood or wildfire evacuations.

Both communitieshave taken in evacuees at different times in recent years, and both say they'd like to see better planning and more resources available for any future emergencies.

Jim Dives, the deputy mayor of Enterprise, saysthat before most of hishamlet burned in last year's wildfires, it was a safe haven for evacuees from the South Slave.

Enterprise is often the first stop for evacuees heading south and took in residentsfrom Hay River and K'atl'odeeche First Nation (KFN) during the flood in 2022 and wildfire in May 2023. Dives said that's been a challenge for his small hamlet.

"We're put in an awkward position because we're really where everybody has to go through in order to get anywhere else," he said.

Dives said he would like to see the territory develop a better system for communication. It was a major issue that contributed to confusion in 2022 when flood evacuees from Hay River and KFN descended on Enterprise.

"They evacuated Hay River; they never told us in Enterprise. All of a sudden, we've got 1,000 people showing up, coming through Enterprise." he said. "There was no RCMP presence for directing traffic or anything."

It's an issue the hamlet is also dealing with right now.The border between Northwest Territories and Alberta has been closed on and off over the last several weeks due to an active wildfire on Highway 1.

Dives said that when the border closes, travelers on the N.W.T.side wait in Enterprise which has a gas station and convenience store. That can cause issues for local residents, he said.

"Mike [St. Amour] couldn't drive to his house the other day because there were so many people parked over by the Cash and Carry," Dives said. "There's no notice given to us when they're going to do it, they just close the border.

"So there's very little communication between the territorial government and us when it comes to closures or that kind of stuff."

Enterprise itselfis still rebuilding after last year's devastating wildfire. Still, Dives says the hamlet could be a good location to construct an evacuation centre a designated place to welcome evacuees from elsewhere.

Dives said the Cash and Carry, which has taken in several evacuees over the years, would be a great building for the centre.

"I don't know what's available for funding from either the territorial or the federal government in order to set that up," he said. But it's a fairly good-sized building, and it wouldn't be hard to convert it," he said.

'They just need somewhere safe,' says High Level mayor

Crystal McAteer, the mayor of High Level, Alta., would also like to see a dedicated evacuation centre in her community.High Level regularly takes in evacuees from surrounding northern Alberta communities and is the first stop for N.W.T. residents heading south.

"We want to provide a facility where they would be safe until their governments figure out who's in charge of what. If we had the [Northwest] Territories advocating with us, it could mean a big difference."

McAteer said that a facility in High Level could serve as a critical evacuation centre for both regions. She said it's time to start having those discussions, as the need for coordinated disaster management grows, and existing resources are sometimes stretched thin.

She said High Level has more than 1,000 rooms available but right now about 800 are filled by evacuees from last year. And with the current wildfires affecting Highway 1 and the N.W.T. border, some N.W.T. residents are sleeping in their vehicles in High Level.

McAteer said her community could help those people if it had a dedicated facility.

"We would provide what we could provide, even spaces for them to sleep in their vehicles, if they had to," McAteer said. "They just need somewhere safe."

McAteer says federal fundingcould help make it happen.Working together with the N.W.T., McAteer said there could be a stronger case made for that federal support.

A spokesperson for the N.W.T. government says there is currently no federal funding program for emergency preparedness off-reserve, but that theterritory is working with other jurisdictionsto push the federal government to include preparedness funding as part of itsoverall approach to disaster response.