As concerns continue to rise regarding the wellbeing of residents of Enterprise following the collapse of cellphone and internet infrastructure in the area, Minister of Environment and Climate Change (ECC) Shane Thompson and ECC Wildfire Information Officer Mike Westwick spoke on the matter.
“I can’t be confident on anything, right now my understanding is the Incident Command is on the ground and in the communities but right now we have not heard of any loss of life,” Thompson says.
“We just had a fire that went right through Enterprise, we’re hoping everybody evacuated and everybody is safe,” the Minister adds.
Mike Westwick addressed the concerns regarding a potential lack of communication between emergency services and residents saying NWT Fire was fully prepared for this type of scenario.
“There are contingencies in place that emergency managers use in order to stay in touch in these types of situations, there’s satellite communications, there’s radio communications, communications were disrupted as people went to get to safety.” Westwick says.
“We are in touch with emergency responders, we do plan for these things, we do plan for this,” he adds.
