The Kangiqsualujjuaq tragedy: a grieving mother’s story

KANGIQSUALUJJUAQ — For three hours, Harriet Etok had no idea if her children were safe.

Etok had been half-buried her in snow after the New Year’s Eve avalanche Kangiqsualujjuaq that destroyed Satuumavik School.

At around 4:30 a.m., she finally learned that searchers had located her daughter Betty, aged four. Betty was dead. She had been killed instantly when the avalanche rammed a metal door into her small body.

Earlier that evening, as she stood at the back entrance of the school’s gym to have a smoke, Harriet had heard the avalanche coming down the slope.

“I heard a big noise and I didn’t know what it was. I heard Louisa [a woman standing next to her] say, “What’s that?”, and once I had heard her say it, when I was still outside, I saw a big cloud of snow coming down. It didn’t take a second to come to us,” Harriet recently told the coroner’s inquest into the deaths caused by this avalanche.

The next thing Harriet knew, she was almost buried in snow. She immediately began digging with her free hands to clear the snow from around herself and the others beside her who were completely covered.

After a man freed Harriet, her thoughts immediately turned to her children, who had been in the gym. She was scared when she saw that the gym was still full of snow. There were few children in sight.

“All my children are lost!,” she cried.

Harriet and her sister began to look near the spot where they had last seen their children, stopping to help dig out other buried youngsters.

At one point, Harriet, still dressed in wet and frozen pants, ran home to get her husband, so that he could go back to the gym with a shovel and help dig.

It took them three hours to learn the whereabouts of their four children who had been at the gym. Betty was the last to be found.

Harriet told the coroner’s inquest that she couldn’t believe that Betty was dead. She just held on to her tightly, saying words of comfort.

“After the incident, I felt that part of me is missing. I try to go on, and I say that it had to happened,” Harriet said. “Sometimes it gets back to me, and I can remember the experience I went through, but I’m okay now.”

When thanked by the coroner for her courage, Harriet said that she was grateful for a chance to talk to the inquest and perhaps, through her account, to help others.