NWT Short on Firefighters, Equipment and Information During 2023 Wildfires: Report

A new report says last year’s catastrophic wildfire season found the Northwest Territories short on firefighters, equipment, information and communications. The third-party investigation is being released today by the territorial government. It says the number of firefighters in the territory had been allowed to fall every year since 1991. Some of the firefighters the N.W.T. did have were poorly trained, since the fires were already burning by the time training programs began. The review found firefighting airplanes were in short supply and those that were available were often poorly used. The report adds that fire officials had inadequate information on the state of their forests and that the computer models used to predict fire behaviour weren’t up to the job....