Still in crisis, Cat Lake First Nation awaits temporary replacement for nursing station razed by fire

Efforts are underway to get a temporary nursing sta‐ tion built in Cat Lake First Nation in northwestern Ontario, but as spring quickly approaches, it's a race against time to get supplies to the remote community using the win‐ ter road.

The Margaret Gray Nursing Station "appears to be a total loss" from the Sat‐ urday night fire, according to the Nishnawbe Aski Police Service. No injuries were re‐ ported and the cause of the fire hasn't been determined.

About 650 people live in the Ojibway community about 440 kilometres north‐ west of Thunder Bay along the Albany River.

With Cat Lake already un‐ der a boil-water advisory since Feb. 26, efforts to save the health-care building caused the water reservoir to dry out. On Sunday, Chief Russell Wesley declared a state of emergency that re‐ mains in place.

Wesley said a task force has been created to ensure Cat Lake's immediate needs are met during the crisis.

"There's a lot of effort to resolve this situation very quickly," said Wesley, speak‐ ing at a news conference, on mining, that was unrelated to the fire.

This is the third significant fire affecting First Nations in northwestern Ontario. The others were:

The provincial and federal governments have commit‐ ted to helping Cat Lake.

"The Ministry of Indige‐ nous Affairs is working with the community of Cat Lake First Nation, provincial and federal government partners to better understand the im‐ mediate needs as a result of the nursing station fire," said spokesperson Curtis Lindsay in an email to CBC News on Monday.

A fire investigation led by the Nishnawbe Aski police's crime unit and Ontario's Of‐ fice of the Fire Marshal is on‐ going.

Plans for temporary nursing station, virtual care

Federal Indigenous Services Minister Patty Hajdu said Ot‐ tawa will help in three phases:

Immediate crisis sup‐ port, including providing bottled water to com‐ munity members, set‐ ting up the healing cen‐ tre as an interim healthcare base and ensuring an Ornge air ambulance is accessible for medical evacuations. Providing modular buildings to be used as a long-term, temporary nursing sta‐ tion. Developing plans to build a new, perma‐ nent nursing station.

The modular buildings are being transported along the winter road before the ice disappears, though that could come suddenly with shifting temperatures. In Jan‐ uary, Nishnawbe Aski Nation Chiefs declared a state of emergency over winter road conditions due to the unusu‐ ally warm weather.

At Tuesday's news confer‐ ence, Wesley commented on the increasingly hazardous conditions of the winter roads amid climate change, but said his community has had to delay planned repairs to its bridges for another year.

"We just couldn't meet the timelines and the require‐ ments of the provincial gov‐ ernment in terms of the per‐ mitting," he said. "Hopefully over the course of this sum‐ mer, we will be able to get over the permitting issue and get those bridges repaired."

On Monday night, he said some people were trans‐ ported out of Cat Lake for specialized medical services, including cancer care, dia‐ betes treatment and addic‐ tion services.

Nurses from Sachigo Lake have come to Cat Lake to help its nurses, Wesley said. There are also plans to pro‐ vide more virtual care to community members.

Last week, Cat Lake signed a memorandum of understanding with two Finnish companies, including 73-Health. The Finnish telemedicine company will provide Cat Lake members with long-distance diagnoses.

Focus on fire prevention

Hajdu said she recognizes the fire services challenges facing remote communities like Cat Lake.

"It could be anything from having the right equipment to having a place to store the equipment, to having a trained and renewed volun‐ teer firefighter service," she said in an interview with CBC News.

She pointed to the federal government's First Nations Fire Protection Strategy, de‐ veloped last year, as a key way the government can work with partners to build First Nations' capacity to pre‐ vent and respond to fires.

People living in First Na‐ tions are 10 times more likely to die in a fire than those liv‐ ing elsewhere in the country.

"With statistics like that, we're compelled to do some‐ thing differently because ob‐ viously what we've been doing has not been as effec‐ tive as we want," said Arnold Lazare, director of operations for the Indigenous Fire Mar‐ shal Service, which is part of the National Indigenous Fire Safety Council.

He said several systemic issues put First Nations at greater risk of fatal fires:

Lack of mandatory building codes. Over‐ crowding due to housing shortages. Shortages of water, firefighting equipment and trained people.

"That's one of the reasons that we are focusing on fire prevention and trying to en‐ sure that each household has at least one working smoke alarm," Lazare said.

The council has several programs designed to achieve this, including tools to assess fire risks within communities and individual households, and assessmen‐ ts of First Nations' fire de‐ partments and their capacity to respond to emergencies.

In his home of Kah‐ nawà:ke, Que., Lazare said the community has taken a proactive approach to fire safety, and it's made a big difference.

"We're very fortunate and our attempt would be to replicate that in other com‐ munities."