Homeward bound

Rainfall didn’t dampen plans to return the remaining Sandy Lake First Nation evacuees back home Tuesday.

More than 250 members of Sandy Lake First Nation stayed in Thunder Bay while they waited on news that it was safe to go back home. Once the Ministry of Natural Resources gave the all clear, the Sandy Lake band council started the process of bringing the displaced residents home over the long weekend.

Sandy Lake First Nation band Coun. Joe Kakegamic said the plan was to fly the remaining 192 people on eight different flights throughout the day. Three flights were already on route to Sandy Lake when the fourth flight took off just after 1 p.m.

Kakegamic planned to take one of the last flights out of the city to ensure that everyone was safely on their way.

“Overall it is a good feeling to have all our elders go back home,” Kakegamic said. “I just want to get home. If there are fires out there still, I don’t think we are too concerned about it. We have the Ministry of Natural Resources out there at Sandy Lake and our chief is getting daily reports from them about the fire situation. We just want to get home.”

Once everyone is back together, the band council has to sit down and revise the evacuee strategy because there was too much of confusion, he said.

“Over the years, we have had some evacuations but not a full-scale evacuation,” he said. “We were experiencing difficulties getting organized. The main thing is we got the people out of there. Away from the danger of fire and smoke but I think we need to revisit the whole evacuation procedures.”

Greg Hankkio, deputy fire chief with the Thunder Bay Fire and Rescue, said they were confident they would have everyone up in the air and on their home by the end of the day but that plan depended on the weather.

Sometimes circumstances don’t go according to plan and it’s important to adapt while having another strategy in the ready, he said.

“I think things will go well and things have gone well so far,” Hankkio said. “This has been a big evacuation. Back two weeks ago, we moved 2,300 people through the Confederation College hangar. There were a lot of people involved, a lot of transportation arrangements to make and for the most part it went pretty well.”

He added that they will have a debriefing session with all the organizations involved to identify or suggest areas that need improvement.