NRRM Mayor praises Fort Nelson's smooth return post-evacuation

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The Northern Rockies Regional Airport in Fort Nelson, where BC Wildfire Service firefighters coordinated their efforts to battle blazes throughout May. (NRRM, Facebook)

FORT NELSON, B.C. — Northern Rockies Regional Municipality (NRRM) Mayor Rob Fraser says Fort Nelson evacuees’ return to the community has gone extremely well so far.

Fraser spoke about the return during the May 31st edition of This Week in the Peace.

“We were concerned that there would be a big panic rush back into the community, but our residents showed some really good sense, and some of them stayed the extra night, and they basically came back in drips and drabs,” Fraser said.

“My understanding was, there was a couple of convoys of ten or fifteen vehicles, but for the most part, it was single families coming back on their own time.”

Residents of the town spent several days in Fort St. John and other nearby communities due to an evacuation order issued because of the Patry Creek wildfire, which is still burning near the town.

The order was downgraded to an alert on Monday, May 27th.

Fraser says the overwhelming majority of Fort Nelson residents have returned to the community since then, with some exceptions.

“There are some, who are called ‘extraordinary evacuees’ — in other words, they’ve got some kind of underlying medical condition, or something like that — where our services aren’t quite up to speed yet, and for one reason or another, they decide to stay out,” he explained.

“Then, there are others who just wanted to avoid the rush and others who have various different reasons.”

Fraser says many local businesses and services have reopened, but some are still in the process of coming back together, including the NRRM itself, which only reopened for full services on Sunday, June 2nd.

“When we moved our Emergency Operations Centre out, we also moved our entire government,” he says. “So, basically, all our servers, all our files, everything went with that group that Sunday afternoon.”

Fraser says the NRRM’s team did an “amazing” job handling the evacuation.

“My hat’s off to every one of our employees and the way they stood up and helped out,” he said.