Kangiqsualujjuaq coroner will report in August

KANGIQSUALUJJUAQ — After listening to more than 40 witnesses at a three-week, $500,000 inquest held to look into the January 1 avalanche in Kangiqsualujjuaq, coroner Jacques Bérubé will take the entire summer to review the evidence and write his report.

The inquest wrapped up last Thursday, although Bérubé plans to return to the community in August to deliver his official report.

This report will contain recommendations designed to prevent deaths from future avalanches, recommendations that Bérubé said would be “pragmatic” and down-to-earth.

“We can dream, but the government wouldn’t necessarily implement what we wish,” he said.

Bérubé’s report won’t assign any blame to any parties for the loss of life and property resulting from the New Year’s Eve avalanche, which killed nine people in Kangiqsualujjuaq, although the families of two avalanche victims, Silas Annanack and Joshua Etok, are considering legal action.

If the report indicates that the avalanche of January 1 was an “act of God” that could have been foreseen, civil lawsuits are likely to follow.

During the inquest Bérubé heard how there were many lost opportunities after a snowslide in 1993 behind the school to lessen the risk of further avalanches in Kangiqsualujjuaq.

The Kativik School Board’s former executive director, Gilbert Legault, defended the Kativik School Board’s weak response to the report it commmissioned in 1995 on the risk of avalanches in Kangiqsualujjuaq.

However, those testifying for the board and for Quebec’s education department could not fully explain why the report’s recommendations for protecting Satuumavik School were disregarded.

No barriers were ever erected, while the school’s policy on access to the back of the building remained confused.

School staff stopped children from playing in the back of the school, but after 6 p.m., when members of the public used the gym, they had to enter the gym through back doors that opened just 40 metres from the avalanche-prone slope.

Bérubé also heard from Quebec civil protection officials who knew about the risk of avalanches in Kangiqsualujjuaq, but didn’t follow-up to make sure citizens were properly protected.

While municipalities are supposed to protect the public, Quebec also recognized that Nunavik’s villages often lack the resources and expertise to fulfil their responsibilities.

The KRG and the Makivik Corporation both made recommendations at the inquest, asking for enough resources to make Nunavik a safer place. In 1998, the KRG only received $33,750 to provide technical emergency assistance to Nunavik’s 14 communities.

“The KRG can only provide assistance to northern villages if it is given the funding to that effect from the department of public security,” KRG’s chairman, Johnny Adams, said in his statement to the inquest.

Adams talked about five years of fruitless negotiations to reach an agreement with Quebec to improve public safety in Nunavik. Since 1993, the region’s request for $8 million had been watered down to $2.9 million in a deal that has yet to be officially announced.

“I hope that I don’t have to reach the conclusion that there has to be a tragedy for the public safety officials to act,” Bérubé commented at the inquest.

The KRG and Makivik also underlined the need for better telecommunications, more support for community radio stations and a 24-hour 911 number for northern Quebec.

Only a dozen outside lines are available in Kangiqsualujjuaq. This meant that, in the hours following the avalanche, vital emergency calls were often impossible to place or receive because all lines were busy. Community radio often filled in the gaps.

George Berthe, Makivik’s secretary-treasurer, also told the inquest that the Quebec should assess the risk of avalanches in other communities and adopt an avalanche zoning standard.

He asked that experts referred to Nunavik not necessarily come from Quebec and that government communications with Nunavik be in Inuttitut “or at least English, as well as in French.”

Other recommendations from Minnie Grey, the director of the Tulattavik Health Centre, and Kangiqsualujjuaq’s mayor, Maggie Emudluk, called for more nurses, more local health education, and better equipment.

When the inquest had heard Emudluk’s closing testimony, Cathie Halpenny, a lawyer for the coroner’s office, offered everyone’s sympathy to the community, as well as thanks and appreciation to all who had shared their experiences.

Although public attendance at the inquest was generally low, many told the Nunatsiaq News that they were pleased that the inquest had been held in the village. They said that they were hesitant to sit in because they feared reliving difficult memories.