Pangnirtung firefighters douse 2-day dump fire

After nearly two and a half days of burning, Pangnirtung’s dump fire has been extinguished, the hamlet’s mayor Eric Lawlor told Nunatsiaq News Monday.

The blaze was extinguished Sunday morning, he said.

“We got lucky on Saturday night when the wind died down and the blizzard ended,” Lawlor said of extinguishing the fire.

“It gave [the firefighters] a chance to really tackle it.”

What began in the early-morning hours of Dec., 2, a fire at Pangnirtung’s wood and metal dump burned throughout the weekend. The fire began in the wood dump and extended to the metal dump.

In the process, toxic fumes from the metal dump were released, forcing residents to stay inside. Blizzard conditions with high winds made the flames hard to extinguish and the cold temperatures froze firefighters’ equipment.

Lawlor said that firefighters worked tirelessly to put out the fire, with little sleep.

Residents are also going outside their houses again, as the wind has blown away the fumes that were around the community, he added.

An air quality official is expected to come to Pangnirtung on Tuesday to test the air though, Lawlor said.

Lawlor added that while he has not had a good look of the dump himself, he has heard that “pretty much most of it has been burnt.”

The hamlet’s senior administrative officer, Jamie Evic, said the interagency group of local schools, businesses and organizations that dealt with the community response to the fire was a connecting experience.

“The whole community came together,” Evic said.

He added that volunteers were also helpful, dropping off food to firefighters working to extinguish the blaze.

The Government of Nunavut’s Department of Community and Government Services will be coming in to the hamlet this week to assess Pangnirtung’s dump after the fire, Evic said.

However, Lawlor said Nunavut’s Department of Community and Government Services has been sitting on funding for a new dump since 2014, and if the community had a new dump, this fire could have been avoided.

A Department of Community and Government Services spokesperson was not immediately available for comment.