New high-tech equipment to be installed on rescue boats: KRG

New safety equipment that allows searchers to see objects as far as two kilometres away is set to be installed on rescue boats across Nunavik.

Civil security director Craig Lingard, who called the equipment “state of the art,” told Kativik Regional Council Wednesday that 10 rescue boats will be equipped with a flare device that acts an “automated identifying radar.”

The device uses a heat signature picked up through infrared technology. It can be aimed and focused for several kilometres in the distance and stabilizes when used in rough waves.

The device has already been tested on a rescue boat in Kangiqsujuaq.

“We were going 60 kilometres an hour, with waves about a metre high,” Lingard said. “And we saw a caribou on the shoreline two kilometres away that we could not see with our naked eye.”

He said this technology “should be a game changer [to assist] when looking for people in rough weather.”

Every rescue boat will be identifiable and trackable if its radio is turned on. It only requires logging onto the service and is easy to use, Lingard said.

Lingard also told council that seven fire trucks are currently in production for delivery to Nunavik and he expects as many as three of them will be available in September.

Contracts have been awarded to renovate fire halls in Tasiujaq, Kangirsuk, Quaqtaq and Akulivik. All the work is expected to be completed by the fall if all goes well with the sealift.

Lingard said his department is also in the process of awarding contracts to renovate the Salluit fire hall, which should be complete by summer 2025.

He also reported fire statistics from 2023 in Nunavik, where 68 fires were reported. Of those, 17 were investigated by Nunavik Police Service, which determined that one fire was either caused by arson or of a suspicious origin.

In 2022, there were 70 fires.

Forty-one per cent of the last year’s fires, or 27 in total, occurred in Kuujjuaq, which has a population of just less than 2,700. However, Lingard said, some communities do not properly record fire department activity.

Nunavik registered a rate of 4.59 fires per 1,000 people. With these statistics, Lingard’s department can compare Nunavik fire activity with the provincial average, which was 2.14 fires per 1,000 people in 2020.

The department calculated more than $4.5 million in material losses from fire last year, compared to $5.3 million in losses in 2022.

Half of the losses last year is attributed to the fire that badly damaged the Kangiqsualujjuaq arena in June 2023.

Jennifer Hunter, who represents Kuujjuaraapik, voiced concerns over forest fires, which sparked multiple other representatives to jump into the topic.

“The landscape is changing, the climate is changing,” said Lingard. “We have to change our approach, we’re doing it with our eyes wide open.”

To prepare for the possibility of more forest fires this summer, Lingard says two members of fire departments in every community will receive training in ground, grass and woodland firefighting.