Fort Nelson residents may return next week, says NRRM Mayor Fraser

FORT NELSON, B.C. — Northern Rockies Regional Municipality (NRRM) Mayor Rob Fraser says he wants to have Fort Nelson residents back in the town by next Tuesday, May 28th.

“We are working very hard at implementing our plan for returning folks back to town,” Fraser says. “We are at phase two, which essentially is making sure that the essential utilities and services are up and running in the community.”

That return plan has seen access passes provided to some residents, allowing them to return to the evacuation area.

Passes were first provided to people who needed to return to feed livestock, then to essential employees responsible for critical infrastructure like BC Hydro, and now, to workers for grocery stores and similar businesses.

Fraser says once phase two is mostly complete, the NRRM will move to phase three, bringing more business owners back into the town.

“They’ll be informed, hopefully over the next couple of days, to start preparing themselves for what they may need and looking at how many people they might need to do that, followed very quickly, we hope, by a call to residents that they can return.”

However, he says that hinges on several important factors, including the state of the Patry Creek and Parker Lake wildfires, weather conditions, and whether Northern Health can get the local hospital back up and running.

If residents are able to return to Fort Nelson next week, Fraser says there are several important steps they’ll have to take afterwards.

“There’ll be a big cleanup that needs to be done,” he says. “People will be cleaning out foodstuffs and anything that’s gone bad in their house, and so the garbage will have to be all picked up and cleaned, and then we still have bear issues in our community, so making sure that that’s all looked after.”

He also says that the residents whose homes have been damaged by the fires will be a top priority and that staff are working on establishing a “resiliency centre” to help connect people with other important services outside of town.

“Those things are all being pulled together as we speak. Once phase two is complete and phase three has started, phase four [involving residents returning to town] will come very quickly after that, provided we’ve got medical services in the community.”

The Parker Lake wildfire, which led to the initial evacuation of Fort Nelson, currently sits at 12,348 hectares in size, according to the BC Wildfire Service (BCWS).

Fraser says BCWS is telling the NRRM that the fire currently “is not posing an imminent threat to the community.”

Meanwhile, 25 kilometres north of Fort Nelson, the Patry Creek wildfire sits at 74,344 hectares.

According to DriveBC, Highway 97 is closed north of Fort Nelson, and Highway 77 is completely closed as a result of the two fires.