City doing well as evacuation hub, Mayor says

Mayor Keith Hobbs says he thinks the city handled its role of housing evacuees quite well, despite criticism in some quarters that a community of 110,000 people should be able to host more than 450 people.

Saying the city performed admirably as a transportation hub, Hobbs said Thunder Bay, at least at his point in time, can’t handle a dual role.

“This city could have taken in probably 5,000 if we’d planned for it or there was a plan in place for it,” Hobbs said, noting the topic did come up when he and other officials met with Premier Dalton McGuinty on Friday afternoon in a closed-door session.

“Our primary role as a transportation hub was to move the evacuees into Thunder Bay, get them placed outside of Thunder Bay.”

Hobbs said he manned the phones, calling community leaders across the province looking for places to house the thousands of First Nations residents who fled more than 110 fires burning throughout the province’s North.

“That exhausted all our resources just to do that one function. If we were going to take on being a home hub, to house the evacuees, that’s a whole other ballgame. The province would had to have come to the party with manpower and staffing. We wouldn’t have been able to do both.”

Nishnawbe Aski Nation Grand Chief Stan Beardy said he saw plenty of gaps in the overall evacuation strategy, as thousands of his people were airlifted from their remote northern communities, flown to Thunder Bay, and were then sent to all parts of the province.

A better strategy might help should a situation like this arise again, he said.

“There has to be better coordination in terms of A to B in moving those evacuees,” Beardy said.

“I also think we need to look at options. Is there any way we can keep those people from the Far North closer to home, in municipalities nearer to our home like Thunder Bay and others.

“And I think that’s what we’re talking about at our meeting today. We need to look at that. I think my people prefer to stay closer to home in maybe larger numbers where they can be together as family units.”

Greenstone Mayor Ron Beaulieu, whose community took in about 1,000 evacuees, filling schools and arenas, said it is a lot of work, especially in places not used to taking in so many displaced people all at once.

Beaulieu, who said Greenstone could likely take more people if necessary, noted Thunder Bay might not be up to the task just yet, not having the experience.

“I think that’s what happened in Thunder Bay,” he said. “But now moving forward, it’s something that could happen in this city, I can’t see why not. And I think that’s why there was this discussion. We’re looking at more plans, better planning and that’s why we’ve got to talk about these things.”