One dead after house fire in Ontario First Nation that lacks firefighting services

PIKANGIKUM, Ont. – One person is dead after a house fire earlier this week in a remote northwestern Ontario First Nation that has seen a lack of firefighting resources in recent years.

Pikangikum First Nation, located more than 500 kilometres north of Thunder Bay, Ont., says 11 others, including children, are safe following the Tuesday morning fire.

The First Nation says that Ontario Provincial Police were on scene in minutes, using fire extinguishers to buy time for the fire response.

They say Indigenous peacekeepers and firefighters arrived and contained the fire within 30 minutes, with the blaze extinguished two hours after the first police call.

Chief Shirley Lynne Keeper calls it another tragedy in a line of fire-related deaths that have greatly affected the Indigenous community, which has said it felt helpless after nine people died in a 2016 house fire and three more were killed in a February blaze.

In both cases, Pikangikum said it did not have trained first responders to fight the fires and Keeper has said the response to the February fire was hindered due to two fire trucks being frozen, since the community does not have an adequate building to shelter the vehicles in extremely cold temperatures.

A tribal council that represents five First Nations in northwestern Ontario created its own training program for emergency responders to help the remote communities it represents respond to devastating fires, such as the ones in Pikangikum.

The first batch of first responders graduated in late March.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 7, 2023.