A report examining how Yellowknife’s AVENS long-term care home was evacuated during last year’s wildfires paints a picture of confusion, collapsed plans and sometimes ‘risky’ efforts to transport vulnerable seniors on planes using baggage carts.

The report, titled “AVENS and the 2023 Wildfire Evacuations,” was obtained by CBC News through a Freedom of Information request and contains many disturbing details about the evacuation of the facility in August 2023. The recommendations included in the report have been shared publicly. by AVENS last January.

Among other things, the report describes how most AVENS staff left Yellowknife immediately after the city-wide evacuation order was declared, leaving barely enough staff on site to care for the residents and ensure they are safely evacuated from the city.

AVENS CEO Darryl Dolynny described it as a “skeletal” team tasked with handling the emergency evacuation of dozens of residents.

According to a post-evacuation study AVENS shared with the government, part of the reason for the staff shortage was that AVENS had no way to communicate with staff other than by email.

At the time of the evacuation, AVENS had 57 long-term care residents, some of whom were receiving specialized care for dementia or had severe mobility difficulties.

The report states that AVENS staff did not learn that it would be responsible for moving its residents during an evacuation until approximately two weeks before the order was issued. Previously, the AVENS emergency plan did not provide for any evacuations.

When CBC asked Dolynny what the cause of this uncertainty was, he responded that it was an “assumption” based on the fact that AVENS is under contract with the territorial health authority to care for patients in long-term care only in its own establishment. Staff had assumed that in the event of an evacuation, health authorities would be responsible.

Confusion during evacuation

Prior to the Yellowknife evacuation, AVENS staff found potential flights for long-term care home residents, temporary hotel rooms and security services in Edmonton, as well as transportation to and from from the evacuation flights. But when the evacuation took place, many of these plans failed.

When AVENS staff attempted to schedule evacuation flights on August 16, 2023, hours before the citywide evacuation order was officially declared, they were told that the agreement would be canceled by the territorial state of emergency and that they would then have to go through the after all, the Emergency Management Organization (EMO) of the territory.

EMO officials eventually connected AVENS personnel with the Canadian Armed Forces, who secured a C-130 Hercules aircraft for evacuation on the afternoon of August 17.

But it took more than six hours to get residents of the AVENS facility to the plane that day, in part because the City of Yellowknife was unable to provide access to city buses as promised.

There were also “real challenges and safety risks” when transporting residents aboard the Hercules aircraft, the report said, as there was “no suitable equipment for loading residents with reduced mobility”.

The Hercules did not finally take off until after midnight and AVENS residents arrived in Edmonton around 2:30 a.m. when, according to the report, “some residents endured another long wait” on buses from the city of Leduc due to hotel reservation issues. have been settled.

After the evacuation order was lifted weeks later, AVENS residents returned to Yellowknife for several days aboard Dash-7 airliners. But the city’s airstrip did not have specialized equipment to accommodate long-term residents with mobility issues.

As a result, some residents had to be loaded onto the plane onto luggage carts and physically transported onto planes by AVENS staff, a process described in the report as “extremely uncomfortable and risky” for residents.

Residents were in danger, expert says

The evacuation of AVENS could have posed a significant health risk to long-term care residents or staff, an expert says.

“I can tell you, you won’t find a luggage cart in a hospital, you won’t find one in a nursing home. It’s not something we would use to transport someone safely.” , said Dr. Samir Sinha, specialist in geriatrics. and researcher at the University Health Network in Toronto. Sinha also works with the Red Cross in Canada and the United States on research and policy related to emergency preparedness for older adults.

He added that long waits and frequent travel between different locations during the evacuation could also be detrimental to vulnerable elderly people, particularly those who might suffer from dementia.

AVENS followed some of the best practices identified through Sinha’s work for the Red Cross: all patients received a travel bag containing important medications and health information, and the organization had a clear plan for where to go and how they would travel. there.

But he added that much of the problems that arose during the AVENS evacuation could and should have been avoided with better planning by AVENS and local and territorial governments.

Prepare for future evacuations

Dolynny insists that although the circumstances of the evacuation were far from ideal, AVENS residents were safe at all times.

“Our residents have never been in a precarious situation,” he told CBC News. “Maybe in an uncomfortable waiting time, yes, but always taken care of.”

He says he is deeply proud of the work AVENS staff and leadership did to evacuate residents and set up care for them, with limited time and resources, in a new jurisdiction.

He also said the organization had made many changes since last year to better prepare for future emergencies – but ultimately he believes AVENS should have gotten a lot more support from the territorial government. He said some of the tasks asked of AVENS during the evacuation, such as negotiating directly with Alberta Health Services for resources, were simply not feasible for a non-profit.

Jay Boast, spokesperson for the territory’s Ministry of Municipal and Community Affairs, defended the territorial government’s actions during the evacuation of AVENS.

“Have we learned lessons and could we have done better? I think that’s clear, but I think it’s in the context of an event that has never happened in history before” , he declared.

“That shouldn’t be lost in the context of how things happened.”

Boast said that since last year, the Northwest Territories government has created a new emergency plan this is intended to avoid any confusion over the distribution of responsibilities in the event of an emergency.

The Northwest Territories Health and Social Services Authority also confirmed that if another evacuation of the city were to occur, it would take the initiative to relocate AVENS long-term care residents and find beds for them in Alberta.