The NWT is better prepared for a "significant and long-lived power outage in a major community" thanks to a recent meeting of not-for-profit organizations and government officials in Yellowknife. 

"We've had some very recent practice with events like floods and fires, so we didn't want to run through a theoretical exercise on that," said Paul Gillard, board chair of United Way NWT. "You never get the disaster you expect, so we were working with our partners at the Red Cross, and we came up with this [power-outage] scenario and worked through it with all the people at the conference."

The two-day gathering, called READY NWT, ran on Oct. 29 and 30 at Yellowknife's Explorer Hotel. The Canadian Red Cross was the chief organizer, but United Way NWT helped facilitate the event, which was attended by roughly 35 representatives from other not-for-profit organizations as well as municipal and territorial politicians. 

"We were really just facilitating the Red Cross event," said Gillard. "Obviously they've got significant resources with staff and programming that small not-for-profits in the North do not have, but they don't have a permanent presence up here. They are working on that, but they're not as connected to the non-for-profit community, so we partnered with them because we sort of know the folks [in the North], and helped them organize."

The objective of the two-day event was to run a tabletop exercise of a disaster scenario and "build some capacity" among participants, according to Gillard. 

By the time it was over, it felt like the exercise was worthwhile. 

"We just wanted to take this somewhat quieter moment to go through one more scenario, to stretch those muscles and just make sure that those relationships between the not-for-profits throughout the territory and the government and national entities like the Red Cross with a very deep stable of programming and expertise can be brought to bear effectively," he said. 

"You could see the light bulbs go on as we went through the different aspects of the emergency," he added. "When we get to the next emergency, which is inevitable, [it will be] a little easier to deal with, [and there will be] a little bit more rapid of a response and a little bit more positive impact on the ground."

Gillard could not say for sure if the Canadian Red Cross will organize similar events in the NWT in the future, but contended that there will certainly be more collaboration between United Way NWT, other not-for-profit organizations and the territory's governments. 

"Yes, we are going do more of this, with hopefully a higher representation of the not-for-profits from the smaller communities of the territory," he said. "As you can understand, it's not easy for somebody that runs a not-for-profit in Fort Good Hope to get to Yellowknife to spend two days talking about a theoretical disaster, so we're going to look at trying to help some of those people get here and participate and just get a broader perspective on emergencies and emergency management because, for sure, there was value in doing this exercise."