A firebug’s paradise

You can’t blame Nunavut’s community government minister, Peter Kilabuk, for saying in a press release last week that “Nunavut’s schools are still safe.”

It’s the only good thing he could have said, given the grim facts that Fire Marshal Gerald Pickett laid out in his report last week on Iqaluit’s Joamie School fire.

The July 4, 2003 fire started as a small blaze that smouldered within a crawl-space under the building for two or three hours after a passing taxi driver noticed it some time after five that morning. But it grew into a raging inferno, consuming the entire building and producing a $10-million replacement bill to be tacked on to the territorial government’s shrinking capital budget.

In this case, public safety was not issue. Classes had ended for the summer and no one was in the building. Even if there were, any occupants would have had plenty of time to get out.

And the fire marshal’s conclusion about the likely cause of the fire – a faulty heat trace element attached to a utilidor line — is unremarkable. Investigators ruled out arson only a few days after the fire.

Pickett’s most serious findings are contained in an add-on section near the back of his report. There he tells us that — following a recent evaluation — every single hamlet fire department in Nunavut fails basic national standards, and suffers from inadequate training, shoddy equipment and limited access to quantities of water needed for firefighting.

The territory is a firebug’s paradise. When a fire starts somewhere, chances are that it will burn until the building’s gone. It’s no wonder the insurance industry won’t touch Nunavut.

Unless Nunavut gets its act together on fire safety and firefighting preparedness, these costs will suck money out of important programs and services that people need.

For the past many years, the Government of Nunavut, and the Government of the Northwest Territories before it, got away with neglecting these issues. They shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it much longer. JB