Behchoko's municipal administration is working to ensure basic essential services can still function if Covid-19 reaches the community.
NNSL file photo
"Behchoko has both above-ground and underground water services, so we are looking at how do we maintain services during the time of a pandemic when we may lose 30 per cent of our workforce," said Larry Baran, interim senior administrative officer. "They may be sick or have to stay home to take care of family who are sick, so we started a process of job shadowing and ramping up backup staff.
"They are not on-call but physically working with full-time staff so that if we do lose somebody, we can slide somebody in right away."
Water, sewer and garbage collection remain high priorities and Baran was adamant that no one is getting cut off from service, even if residents have outstanding accounts.
"We want people to do extra hand-washing, extra cleaning and laundry, so we want to make sure that water is not an issue," he said.
Other municipal services have wound down over the last few weeks.
"The first thing here that took a hit was the recreation programs," the interim SAO said. "That was hard to shut down but we had to deal with it because of social distancing issues."
Last week, the community was the last office in the territory to still offer motor vehicle services.
The municipal office has also been closed to the public and work hours for staff have been reduced to four hours a day from eight.
Behchoko's administration is in daily contact with the GNWT's Department of Municipal and Community Affairs (MACA) for daily reports on the status of the coronavirus in the NWT and has also enlisted assistance with emergency planning.
With the closing of Ekati and Diavik Mines last month, Baran said there have been mine workers who have returned to the community and brought their talents home with them -- things such as heavy equipment and machinery operations skills that can be useful in the community.
Community connections
Baran said Behchoko, which lies northwest of Yellowknife on Highway 3, has also been working closely with the other three communities under the Tłı̨chǫ government - Gameti, Whati and Wekweeti. So far, he said he has been impressed with how all representatives have been working together during these extraordinary times.
Tłı̨chǫ inter-agency meetings involving the regional communities started about three weeks ago. The four communities have been meeting twice weekly with representatives from the Tłı̨chǫ Community Services Agency, the Tłı̨chǫ Government, and the Tłı̨chǫ Investment Corporation to share information and keep up to date on how they are responding to the pandemic.
"I am so impressed with how folks in Behchoko and the Tlicho agencies have been working in cooperation," said Baran. "It has not been seamless but we are watching out for one another.
"I think each one is finding little blind spots in one another's approaches that we may not have been able to see otherwise. As a result, we are covering more bases and using our joint resources a lot more effectively."
image courtesy of Google Maps
Food security
Behchoko, with a population of approximately 1,875 people, has a Northern Store, unlike the other three communities which have food stores run by the Tlicho Investment Corporation.
Baran said like many other northern communities, there were initial worries about panic buying that cleaned out food and cleaning and emergency supplies quickly. He has been in constant contact with the Northern store's regional management in regards to food cycles and supply chains.
"They're stalking up the warehouses with the intention in recognizing that there may be a periodic interruptions on the supply chain," he said, "but so far we have been doing well here."
However, due to difficulty in getting people to follow health and safety guidelines, the local Northern store is cutting back hours.
"I think the Northern store is doing the best they can to disperse people and reduce the number of people in the store," said Baran. "I just got an email Saturday from the store saying they were going to reduce the hours and start closing store on Sunday because the stress on the staff. They are trying to do work but also at the same time trying to correct people and it is creating some concerns there."
Anna Sahadat, store manager of the Northern Store in Behchoko said that buying patterns have stabilized over the last week, but there has been panic buying since early March.
“I can’t believe it has only been a few weeks since this was exploding and it feels like several months,” she said. “We did see quite a bit of panic buying. We did institute limits on key items so that of those key items are spread out across households instead of one or two houses hoarding.”
Sahadat said the store has limited hours because of staff shortages. There have been cases where staff have travelling out of the territory in early last March and had to self-isolate upon returning.
Several health and safety measures have been put in place including mandatory hand washing for staff. Cashiers must take 15 minute breaks to sanitize while grocery clerks must break every half hour.
“Those working in our back room and doing grocery shelving are a little less exposed to our customer base,” she explained.
Sahadat said she is in constant contact with the community government and the Tlicho government on food security, but items that have been short due to panic buying - toilet paper, flower and disinfectant wipes - have been slowly replenishing.
“I think if we can continue with the normalized pattern that we saw this week into next week and if we can get products onto the shelf without panic buying then we might be able to reduce panic overall and it will ease the outages,” she said.
Taking health and safety seriously
Even as local facilities have closed, including schools, and municipal services have been reduced, Baran said there are some in the community who are still not taking the risk of the coronavirus seriously.
"I don't know that everyone really appreciates how serious the situation is," he said. "I am dealing with emergency responders everyday that recognize seriousness of this situation and recognize the importance of everyday we have that we don't have to respond to Covid in the community -- that these are precious times for us to prepare ourselves.
"We see it downtown, where you will be driving and you see four or five people wandering together and almost leaning on each other," he said. "They don't recognize the importance of keeping that distance or staying at home.
Alcohol concerns
During the first weekend of April, the Dene Nation sent a motion to the Premier Caroline Cochrane requesting that restrictions be put in place on alcohol territorially during the pandemic.
Baran pointed out that Behchoko is the only one of the four communities that has allowed alcohol consumption since lifting the liquor ban in December 2016.
This week the community is revisiting the issue as many communities across the North are finding that alcohol consumption can fuel public gatherings -- something the GNWT is trying to avoid during the pandemic.
"There are some council members who would like to see prohibition restored or at least something temporarily put in place because they were concerned about drug and alcohol abuse happening right now at a difficult time in history," Baran said. "If everyone would go home to get drunk that would be one thing -- they would be maintaining social distancing."