Miners and explorers are scaling back or modifying operations in the Northwest Territories as severe wildfires prompted the government to declare a territory-wide state of emergency on Tuesday.
An evacuation order was put in place Wednesday morning for parts of the North Slave region as fires crept closer to the Yellowknife city boundary on Highway 3. Fire danger forecasts were rated at “extreme” for Yellowknife and three other communities in the North Slave region.
“The fire went right through our camp,” David Webb, president of Sixty North Gold Mining (CSE: SXTY) told The Northern Miner over the phone from Vancouver. Sixty North owns the Mon gold property, which lies about 45 km north of Yellowknife and is accessible only by air in the summer.
Aerial view of Sixty North’s Mon gold project in the NWT. Credit: Sixty North Gold Mining
“No one has been on the ground to see the damage but the trees around us have burnt…I was on the property on Aug. 11 and I could see the fire about 3 km away,” Webb said.
He said he had followed Sentinel satellite imagery of the area on Aug. 15 and noticed the fire had moved another 10 km. “It’s very fast moving and pretty bad,” he said.
Webb, a gold mining veteran with more than 40 years experience in the territory noted that while wildfires in 2004 and 2014 were destructive, this year’s fires are unique because they’re approaching urban areas.
“These ones seem to be multiple fires going after population centres,” he said. “In the past the cities were safe. It changes the focus when it’s moving in on the city of Yellowknife and there’s evacuation orders.”
While exploration and development work at Mon had been ongoing, Webb said it was difficult to comment on how much the fires have interrupted their development schedule due to current market conditions. Sixty North managed to receive some financing in the spring after it announced a non-brokered private placement to raise up to $1.5 million.
Still, Webb said the company has almost $4 million worth of assets at the Mon site, including machinery, a camp and a sewage treatment plant, all of which will have to be assessed for damage.
“[We have to] make sure it’s all safe and we’re not leaking fuel from our tanks and things aren’t damaging the environment. And assess the facilities and see what has to be repaired,” he said.
The Gahcho Kué diamond mine is almost 300 km northeast of the wildfires approaching Yellowknife. But De Beers, which operates the mine in a joint venture with Mountain Province Diamond (TSX: MPVD; US-OTC: MPVD) says the fires are still affecting its personnel and operations.
De Beers’ senior communications officer Terry Kruger said the company is working to accommodate about 40 employees who are from communities south and west of Yellowknife that were recently evacuated due to the fires.
“Perhaps some people will stay on and work overtime… When you lose people, it does hurt the overall operation,” Kruger said, though he couldn’t specify how much productivity would be affected.
“We’ve told our employees… who were evacuated to Fort McMurray or Grand Prairie [in Alberta] they can take their unused vacation and don’t have to rush back to work so they can stay with their families,” Kruger said.
He added that about 30% of the mine’s workforce lives in Yellowknife and the company is observing the wildfire situation closely.
The fires had not affected the mine’s fly-in resupply operations, Kruger said.
At North Arrow Minerals’ (TSXV: NAR) LDG lithium project, about 130 km north of Gahcho Kué, logistical problems related to the fires have delayed its drilling program by a week.
“[It’s] not directly impacted by the threat of fire,” said company spokesperson Nick Thomas. “However, as you can imagine every community up there is on high alert and with today’s declaration of emergency in the N.W.T. any helicopter or aircraft is going to have many more important uses for the next while.”
Commenting on the company’s DeStaffany lithium project, located 115 km east of Yellowknife, and 18 km southwest of Vital Metal’s (ASX: VML; US-OTC: VTMXF) Nechalacho rare earths project, Thomas said North Arrow is in touch with a nearby affected community to see if it needs any supplies.
“Things are going to become very hard to source in Yellowknife, which is where most everything comes from,” he said.
North Arrow CEO Ken Armstrong said that although a fire is approaching the area near DeStaffany, the company isn’t currently active at the camp and no people or assets are in danger.
“If we were [active] there, we wouldn’t be there,” he said. “What a summer, all across Canada.”
Li-FT Power (CSE: LIFT), which operates the Yellowknife lithium project, said on Tuesday that it had temporarily suspended operations at its Hidden Lake camp, just 25 km east of the city.
The company said it had demobilized personnel, essential equipment and key drill core at the camp, though a small maintenance crew would stay in the camp.
Li-FT noted in a release that two fires were burning near the site, one 18 km to the northwest and one 26 to the southwest.
“We are monitoring the fire situation closely and will resume normal operations as soon as possible,” said CEO Francis MacDonald. “Our thoughts are with the people who have been evacuated from their homes and communities and with the fire crews that are working tirelessly to protect the Northwest Territories.”
The blazes in the territory add to an already chaotic wildfire season across the country, with mining operations affected as early as June in Ontario and Quebec and more disturbed in the West as the summer continued.
How many forest fires were burning in all of 2023 in the N.W.T. with a record breaking temperature of .2 degree celsius over the previous record in 2004 of 35.3 degree celsius? How many forest fires were there in the N.W.T. in 2004? It seems to be hard to get that info on-line! Forest fires that start in close proximity to towns and villages should be scrutinized very closely!!!