Wildfire Evacuation and Emergency Management in Remote First Nations: the Case of Sandy Lake First Nation, Northern Ontario

Wildfire Evacuation and Emergency Management in Remote First Nations: The Case of Sandy Lake First Nation, Northern Ontario By Henok Workeye Asfaw A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in HUMAN GEOGRAPHY Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences University of Alberta © Henok Workeye Asfaw, 2018 ABSTRACT Many decades of successful wildfire suppression in Ontario have resulted in very few losses of life or property. However, the evacuations that often accompany wildfire suppression have continued to disrupt many remote First Nations in the province. Sandy Lake First Nation in Northern Ontario was forced to evacuate due to a wildfire that came within nine kilometers of the community in 2011, threatening safety and substantially reducing air quality. Following a community declaration of emergency, residents were airlifted and scattered to 12 cities and towns in Ontario and Manitoba. Using a qualitative community-based research approach, this study explored how residents of Sandy Lake First Nation were prepared for and affected by the 2011 evacuation. Social constructionism was employed as a guiding theoretical approach. A total of 56 interviews and two focus group discussions were completed with the evacuated band members, those who stayed behind, and people who had a management role during the evacuation. The latter group included the Chief and Council, frontline workers, and community evacuation liaisons. After describing and documenting the evacuation using eight temporal stages of the evacuation, this thesis provides an in-depth and nuanced exploration of the wide range of factors affecting the residents’ evacuation experiences. First, the thesis examines how issues related to preparedness and during-event communication influenced band members’ experiences. These issues included a delay in obtaining site-specific and reliable information about the wildfires, a lack of clarity about the protocols to be followed in declaring a community state of emergency and perceived constraints in government wildfire management policy. The lack of overall community preparedness to respond to wildfire emergencies was found to be a main factor aggravating vulnerabilities to wildfire emergency. Second, the thesis explores the impact that the government’s evacuation operation had on Sandy Lake First Nation and how that affected the band members. This study has shown that scattering residents to more than 10 hosting communities throughout Ontario and Manitoba caused four major problems: ii communication and information-sharing were more difficult, families were separated, community cohesion and support services were disrupted, and residents’ sense of place attachment was impacted. These findings contribute to a robust understanding of the social and cultural factors influencing wildfire evacuation experiences of Indigenous people and how these influence the ability that First Nations community resident have to cope with or adapt to evacuation-related disruptions. Third, this study examines individual characteristics of the evacuees (e.g., age, income, health conditions and vulnerabilities induced through cultural, and/or social barriers) and the services provided in the host communities that affect evacuees’ experiences. This study found that elders’ experiences were affected by the following factors: continuation of health service at the host community, dealing with health issues in the absence of family support, accommodation-related challenges and cultural factors related to language barriers and a lack of access to traditional food. The study also identified a combination of factors that negatively affected the experience of other evacuees. These included inadequate accommodations; financial problems; a lack of activities; racism; alcohol and substance abuse and inappropriate behavior; and concern over the condition of homes, property and pets. This study found factors that contributed to evacuees’ positive experiences in host communities including material and emotional support from local residents, perceptions of the evacuation as a free vacation and an opportunity to socialize with fellow community members, and leadership from the Chief. The results of this thesis underscore the fundamental importance of building community capacity to deal with hazards and emergencies by taking into account the unique characteristics of Indigenous residents. iii Preface Contemporary environment and development issues, in particular the complex ways in which disasters impact and influence poverty and development, have always been areas of interest and inspiration for me. Growing up in Ethiopia, I became aware at an early age of the disastrous impacts of environmental extremes such as drought and flooding. I chose to focus my graduate studies on how disasters impact and influence poverty and development in large part because many of the adverse impacts of a disaster are rooted not in nature itself. Rather, they are the result of a lack of capacity to prepare for or mitigate disaster risk, and inability to respond to and recover from a disaster. When I was a freshman at Addis Ababa University in 2000, I remember a devastating forest fires occurred in southern and eastern parts of Ethiopia, destroying hundreds of hectares of highland natural forests. With limited local capacity, there was an urgent international call for help to suppress the fires. In addition, hundreds of Addis Ababa University students volunteered to help control the blaze. The same reason - the lack of local capacity and preparedness to hazards, along with many other reasons, can be attributed to drought hazards that affects millions in Ethiopia almost every other year. I did my Bachelor degree in Geography and my Master’s degree in Development Studies (specializing in Environment and Development) at Addis Ababa University. As part of my MA degree, I spent one year with forest-dwelling Indigenous communities in southwest Ethiopia studying forest-based livelihoods and resource management challenges. After completing my Masters, I spend the next five years teaching and engaging in research at two public universities: Jimma University (Sep. 2007 – Oct. 2008) and Adama University (Oct. 2008 – Sep. 2012), where I taught undergraduate courses mainly focusing on social science aspects of disaster risk and environmental management. While teaching, I engaged in community-based studies in remote rural communities, which further strengthened my research skills, experience and interest in the human dimensions of environmental hazards. While searching for appropriate program in my field of study and research interest, I came across Dr. Tara McGee’s project about the human dimension of environmental hazards. I was honored to join her research team under the First Nation Wildfire Evacuation Partnership Project in which she is a principal investigator. I was motivated to join the project and pursue my PhD for two reasons: the project falls well within my general research interest of disaster and emergency management, and it employed a community-based approach by collaborating with remote Indigenous communities, an area in which I had already acquired considerable experience. I believe that Indigenous people in both developed and developing regions share similar experiences. Although Ethiopia has never been colonized, many of our remote Indigenous communities share certain similar characteristics with Indigenous communities in Canada. For example, similar to the people of Sandy Lake First Nation, the Indigenous people I worked with, the Kafa, and Manja in southwest Ethiopia, live near forests and have unique cultures, traditions and worldviews. Interestingly, Indigenous people in both countries have an inbuilt social support system that can help make their communities resilient in the face of disaster and emergencies. As someone interested in social science disaster research, this is also a source of inspiration that kept me motivated and willing to spend four years doing community- based research in a remote Indigenous community in Canada. iv Acknowledgements To almighty GOD: for manifold blessings and guidance up to now and in the future. My greatest debt is to Professor Tara McGee, my supervisor, for her constant support, mentorship and encouragement. The conception, not to mention the completion, of this dissertation would not have been possible without her continuous advice and guidance. I also would like to thank my other PhD supervisory committee members, Dr. Leith Deacon and Dr. Sean Robertson, for providing insightful and critical comments as I wrote my thesis proposal and the dissertation. Also, thank you to Dr. Amy Christianson and Kyla Mottershead for the many valuable discussions we had during our monthly First Nation Wildfire Evacuation Partnership research team meetings, which helped me to better understand my research area. Perhaps most substantially, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to the people of Sandy Lake First Nation. I owe a great debt to all those who agreed to be interviewed and spent time sharing their wildfire evacuation experiences with me. I would like to offer my sincere thanks to Chief Bart Meekis and former Chief Adam Fiddler for their interest and involvement in this research. I am particularly thankful to former Chief Adam Fiddler, Deputy Chief Robert Kakegamic, Councilors Fabian Crow and Joe Kakegamic, and Kenny Goodwin for their assistance and advice while I was in Sandy Lake. I also

Load more