While Timmins started laying the groundwork to be a host community for 2020 First Nations evacuations, Mayor George Pirie says an evacuation to they city wouldn't be optimal.
“Kashechewan community does not want to come here for all the various obvious reasons. They have been self isolating as a group there and are currently healthy. There has been little desire to come to a community where COVID-19 is percolating throughout the community,” said Pirie at this week's council meeting.
Earlier this year, council approved Timmins being a host community. As the ice breaks up on the Albany River and flooding threatens the James Bay coast, this is the time of year evacuees usually start arriving.
In 2019, more than 750 evacuees from Kashechewan were housed in Timmins for about seven weeks during the spring breakup.
During the summer, people from Pikangikum First Nation and Keewaywin First Nation evacuated due to forest fires were in the city for two weeks each.
With concerns about COVID-19, this year about 1,000 Kashechewan residents are relocating to higher ground at their traditional hunting territory.
There are still about 1,000 people in the community for a variety of reasons.
Timmins Coun. Kristin Murray said she talked to Kashechewan leaders this week.
If people have to be evacuated, she said their preference would be to go to communities like Kapuskasing, North Bay and Sudbury.
Those are communities with lower COVID-19 rates.
The Porcupine Health Unit (PHU), which covers the Timmins area, has had 59 confirmed COVID-19 cases. Of those, 43 are resolved and four people have died.
Thirty-six of the PHU's cases have been in Timmins. While the health unit doesn't list specific smaller communities in reporting of positive tests, there has been one case of COVID-19 confirmed and resolved in the area of Kapuskasing, Opasatika, Val Rita-Harty, Moonbeam, Fauquier-Strickland.
Public Health Sudbury and Districts have 58 confirmed cases, of which 45 are resolved and one person has died. The North Bay Parry Sound Health Unit has had 16 confirmed cases, with 15 being resolved.
“This is an ever-changing environment right now. So I think maybe tomorrow something else could happen, but I think as it stands right now they’re not considering Timmins as an option but you know if it’s a must, they do have to flee their community then they would leave. But at the same time it was more or less like they’ll would try to stay in their home community as long as they could but at the same time, there’s so much uncertainty,” she said.
While the city has been told it won't receive evacuees, Pirie said the city has started outreach to service providers to ensure they can provide services if people have to come here.
He said there has also been conversations with mining companies with camps to look at alternatives of having a camp or parts of camps available to keep people healthy and safe.
