P.E.I.-born nurse recounts evacuation of Yellowknife hospital

A P.E.I.-born labour and delivery nurse was part of a team that helped evacuate pregnant patients from a hospital in Yellowknife.

Residents in the city of about 20,000 were recently told to leave as wildfires grew closer, and Jenna Blanchard helped get pregnant patients at Stanton Territorial Hospital ready to board a chartered planeto Edmonton.

"It was a big joint effort with the help of military, to get patients, especially those who are on stretchers or wheelchairs or unwell, to the places they needed to go, the military planes," she told Island Morning.

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Yellowknife began its evacuation on Aug 16 due to a wildfire, one of more than 200 wildfires burning in the province. More than two-thirds of the territory's 45,000-plus residents are living in evacuation centres or hotels, some as far away as Winnipeg.

N.W.T. Health Minister Julie Green called the hospital move "complex." Green said one male patient died during preparations for transport from the hospital, but that the death was "expected."

"Staff showed incredible dedication by providing the best care to our patients," she said at the time.

'A challenging time'

Yellowknife is still mostly empty, with its evacuation order in place and the fire about 15 kilometres northwest of the city.

Blanchard says almost the entirehospital wasevacuated, a first for her.

"It's been a challenging time, I'm certain, for a lot of people," she said.

Blanchard said the reality in the territory is that people from many communities, primarily Indigenous communities, already need to leave home to give birth in a hub community like Yellowknife up to six weeks before the delivery. So some patientswere already displaced when the fire forced them from the territorial capital to Edmonton, Calgary or Vancouver.

"All over, wherever maybe people have family," he said. "And I imagine that is very financially stressful."

Blanchard feels for people worryingabout where they will get care and medical records and accommodation while also worrying about theirfriends and neighbours back home.

She said some people in the hospital evacuation"showed their stress levels a lot more," othersstill smiling, but everybody came together and got it done.

"We would all be lying if at some points we didn't feel stressed out," she said. "But it definitely helped to have the familiar faces around us, everybody helping each other to get through it."

So much so that it was sad to part with her colleagues asthey fled the city.

"I just felt so grateful for [it] kind of reminding me about howspecial it is to have that bond with your colleagues," she said.

Blanchard, who has been in N.W.T. for nine years,lives on a houseboat on Great Slave Lake, so she believes her home is more protected than many. But she says she's thinking of others in the community who could lose theirs if the fires creep closer.