WEBEQUIE — Community members have been alerted to the possibility that Webequie could be evacuated soon, Chief Cornelius Wabasse said Thursday.
A dramatic turn in the Nipigon 5 fire on Wednesday ratcheted up talk of evacuation in the First Nation on Winisk Lake.
As of 2 p.m. Thursday, the blaze covered about 1,200 hectares and was within one kilometre of the community.
Waterbombers and Fire Ranger crews were dispatched to the scene Wednesday afternoon.
“We have community planning for any emergencies,” Wabasse said Thursday in a phone interview.
“And whenever there’s a fire, we go into our phases. So right now we’re at phase 1, which is the alert phase.
“That’s the pre-evacuation notice to our community members, when they’re told about the potential threat,” he continued.
“And then we closely monitor the situation with the Ministry of Natural Resources, and other workers as well.
“We advise our community members to prepare for an evacuation, (taking into account) kids or anything that is of value to them just in case there is an evacuation.”
Should evacuation be necessary, it will be prioritized so that elders, children and people with medical conditions can leave first, Wabasse said.
As of late Thursday morning, the fire did not seem as threatening as it did Wednesday evening and “the air quality is bearable,” he said.
“So we’re still doing good at this time. But we are making preparations for having to evacuate.”
Chris Marchand, regional fire information officer in the Ministry of Natural Resources, said Thursday that crews were “making some good progress” against Nipigon 5 and “air attack with water bombers was fairly effective (Wednesday) in the initial hours of the fire.”
Located 540 kilometres north of Thunder Bay, Webequie is a fly-in community with about 900 residents. Another 153 members of the First Nation were living off-reserve as of April 2025, according to the federal department of Crown-Indigenous Relations.
