Nunavut communities fear disasters from air and sea

“It’s really a skeleton crew as far as sovereignty is concerned”

By JANE GEORGE

After the Clipper Adventurer hit rocks near Port Epworth in the Coronation Gulf, about 100 kilometres from Kugluktuk, on Aug. 27, 2010, the Coast Guard's Amundsen icebreaker came to the rescue, evacuating more than 100 passengers and crew. (SUBMITTED PHOTO)


After the Clipper Adventurer hit rocks near Port Epworth in the Coronation Gulf, about 100 kilometres from Kugluktuk, on Aug. 27, 2010, the Coast Guard’s Amundsen icebreaker came to the rescue, evacuating more than 100 passengers and crew. (SUBMITTED PHOTO)

It was a tricky evacuation when more than 100 passengers and crew from the Clipper Adventurer arrived in Kugluktuk by barge in the early hours of Aug. 30, 2010. But the transfer would have been much more difficult if the grounding of the  cruise ship had led to injuries. (FILE PHOTO)


It was a tricky evacuation when more than 100 passengers and crew from the Clipper Adventurer arrived in Kugluktuk by barge in the early hours of Aug. 30, 2010. But the transfer would have been much more difficult if the grounding of the cruise ship had led to injuries. (FILE PHOTO)

(updated at 5:45 p.m.)

A year ago on Aug. 27, the Clipper Adventurer, a cruise ship operated by Mississauga, Ont.-based Adventure Canada, hit a rock in about three metres of water about 55 nautical miles east of Kugluktuk.

No one was injured, but the passengers and crew were forced to remain aboard the stranded ship for almost two days until the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Amundsen arrived to take them to Kugluktuk.

The one-year anniversary of that near-disaster is something that Steve Novak, the economic development officer for the Nunavut hamlet of 1,300, has been thinking a lot about recently.

The Aug. 20 crash of First Air flight 6560 brought also back memories of how he and others in Kugluktuk struggled to deal with the unexpected arrival of more than 100 cruise ship passengers and crew into their community.

Fortunately, Novak said, no one was injured when the Clipper Adventurer grounded.

But logistically, it was “awful” dealing with the emergency in the community — and the fact that Clipper Adventurer was relatively stable was pure luck, he said.

It could have been worse, if the situation had been as critical as the recent air crash Resolute Bay, in which 12 passengers died and three were injured.

“But I have no doubt in my head that if something happened at that level that we would do more good than harm. We would definitely do our best,” Novak said

Yet these events have driven home the importance of planning for a large-scale disaster, he said.

There was nothing in place last year when responders on board the Amundsen tried to reach Kugluktuk.

If there was such an emergency plan, neither he nor the hamlet’s senior administrative official, both recent arrivals to their jobs, knew where it was.

But that didn’t stop Novak from acting to deal with a shipload of people, aged 15 to 90, due to arrive in Kugluktuk off the Amundsen after midnight on Aug. 30.

No one in Kugluktuk knew that the rescued group planned to head to the community until the early evening of Aug. 29.

And almost everyone in the community of 1,400 had gone fishing.

Someone from the Amundsen finally roused Irene Horn, co-owner of the Coppermine Inn in Kugluktuk.

Horn was the only person answering a phone at that time because she was preparing Sunday supper for the inn’s guests.

Through her family, Novak finally learned about the crowd’s arrival.

That chain of reaction “through somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody” wasn’t ideal, now Novak says.

But “once I thought there was no danger to anyone it took a lot of pressure off. I didn’t have to be organized 50 boats for a rescue,” he said.

Novak had originally been asked to arrange cultural activities for the ship’s passengers — something he’s going to be doing again Sept. 1 when the Clipper Adventurer calls at Kugluktuk again.

“This time I hope they steer a bit to the left” to avoid the underwater hazard the ship ended sitting on, he joked.

Today Kugluktuk is bettter prepared to deal with an emergency, says Deputy Mayor Grant Newman.

The hamlet is fine-tuning its emergency plan — which did, it appears, exist a year ago.

Everyone is asking, particularly after the Resolute Bay crash, “are we prepared?,” Newman said.

Community members have taken an emergency training course, and the hamlet plans to organize a meeting with all those who would be involved in a major search and rescue effort.

“Now the urgency is there,” he said.

Just last week, people in Kugluktuk had to deal with an injury of a woman out on the land. A helicopter in town was able to get her, but that was just luck, Newman said.

In Nunavut, the recent plane crash in Resolute Bay will not affect the Government of Nunavut emergency planning process, said the GN’s director of protection services branch, Ed Zebedee.

“However, lessons learned will certainly be provided to each community for their information and planning purposes,” Zebedee said.

All potential hazards are included in the development of a “Community Emergency Plan,” he said.

Every community in Nunavut identified an aircraft disaster as one of the top 10 hazards and “have developed their plans accordingly,” he said.

Right now, nine Nunavut communities have Emergency Plan By-Laws in place, but the GN is encouraging all other communities to have their Community Emergency Plans By-Laws in place by December 2011, he said.

In Kugluktuk, a major air disaster is a particular worry because most aircraft cross over the Coppermine River as they come in to land — and, on Aug. 26, a float plane ended up on a sandbar while coming into the airport.

An air disaster with injuries or casualties among its passengers and crew would be difficult to deal with, say hamlet officials — and they wouldn’t necessarily have a doctor in town or extra military assistance nearby, which was the case in Resolute Bay on Aug. 20.

Novak said Ottawa should spread out its presence across the North and make special emergency response kits available.

“It’s really a skeleton crew as far as sovereignty is concerned in the North,” he said. “It’s a little unnerving. I’ve realized that there’s not a lot I can do.”

While visiting Resolute Bay Aug. 18, National Defence Minister Peter Mackay said Ottawa plans to keep about 100 members — and equipment — in Resolute Bay year-round, at the renovated Polar Continental Shelf Program facility.

That’s a step in the right direction in allaying the fears that Arctic communities like Kugluktuk have about marine and air disasters, said Rob Huebert, an expert in Arctic security issues and associate director of the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary.

“The Arctic is going to be much more busy,” Huebert said. “For good and bad, the military is going to have to learn how to operate in the Arctic at all times of the year. A year-long presence will only act to allow us to be able to properly respond to the coming challenges.”

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