It is difficult to say when the displaced residents of Enterprise will be able to return, according to the GNWT’s Department of Municipal and Community Affairs (MACA).
“The timeline of when residents will return to the community is dependent on a variety of circumstances, including decisions that residents will make for themselves concerning their own plans,” said Jay Boast, a spokesperson for the department.
Last August, much of Enterprise burned down amid wildfires that raged across the territory. The majority of the hamlet’s approximately 120 residents lost their homes.
Nearly six months later, very few of those homes have been replaced, and a significant portion of the population is still displaced.
There is rising frustration among residents in and out of the community. Some feel that Mayor Michael St. Amour and senior administrative officer (SAO) Blair Porter have failed to properly communicate important information to residents. Others jump to the defence of the mayor and SAO, and believe it is MACA that is failing to relay relevant information.
People on both sides of that divide have questions, and in many cases, they are unclear on who should be providing answers.
That depends on a number of factors, most notably whether a resident’s home was insured or not.
“There are multiple organizations involved in supporting the needs of Enterprise right now,” said Boast.
“MACA’s role is to implement the Disaster Assistance Policy and provide assistance for essential items, the loss of which was neither preventable or insurable. Where homeowners have insurance, they are working with their insurance provider for assistance. MACA is providing assistance to uninsured primary residents.”
The GNWT is assisting uninsured residents in a number of ways, most notably by providing them with temporary accommodation and by enlisting a dedicated pathfinder, an individual who is available to assist those residents and answer their questions. The pathfinder can be contacted at 867-874-2193 or disasterassistance@gov.nt.ca, or visited at MACA’s Hay River office.
“The department is also working closely with Public Safety Canada to determine eligibility of uninsured home and business losses under the federal Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangement (DFAA),” Boast added.
According to Public Safety Canada’s official website, “DFAA has contributed over $7.9 billion in post-disaster assistance to help provinces and territories with the costs of response and of returning infrastructure and personal property to pre-disaster condition.”
MACA is also in charge of the cleanup of the charred lots of uninsured Enterprise residents. The department has contracted that substantial task to Colliers Project Leaders.
“Colliers is working with several sub-contractors to clean up hazardous materials, such as asbestos and heavy metals, concrete, hazardous trees, other metals and general construction debris, as well as ash,” said Boast. “Results from ash samples collected from fire-affected properties in Enterprise have shown that several metal and petroleum parameters exceed GNWT Tier 1 guidelines and cannot be disposed of at the Enterprise landfill, therefore contaminated waste will need to be transported outside the NWT.
“Colliers also issues a weekly newsletter on the status of the debris clean-up project, which the department provides directly to all registered Enterprise residents and businesses.”
Colliers will complete its initial cleanup of contaminated materials in Enterprise soon, according to Boast, and those materials are expected to be moved to qualified landfills before the end of the winter.
“Clean up of other materials and final grading of sites will be undertaken in the spring,” he said, which should make the burned lots of uninsured homeowners “available for new homes during the summer of 2024.”
The community’s mayor expressed concern about who will clean the lots of several insured residents who, after almost six months away from Enterprise, have decided to take insurance payouts and buy homes elsewhere.
“There’s some people that were coming back that aren’t now. They’re walking away,” St. Amour said. “They’re saying, ‘You know what, give me the payout for my loss, and we’re moving away.’”
“We have two or three properties that haven’t been cleaned up that are insured properties, and I get the contractors here saying that ‘they’re insured properties, we’re not touching them,’”
According to Boast, MACA “has asked its contractor on the debris clean-up project to coordinate work with insurance companies on the remediation of their clients’ properties, where possible, to help reduce costs and improve efficiencies.”
Boast added that MACA will continue to work with St. Amour, Porter, and the municipal office “as recovery activities progress,” and that the department has been “conducting site visits and meeting with impacted residents and businesses.”
Former Enterprise SAO Tammy Neal suggested that “MACA should take over” hamlet operations “until the community is rebuilt,” and one other displaced resident called for the same action under the condition of anonymity. However, Boast stated that MACA “is not contemplating administration of the hamlet at this time.”