Fort Good Hope’s Arctic Circle Enterprises loses garage in fire

Around 11 p.m. on the night of May 28, Heather Bourassa looked out her window and spotted a plume of smoke rising from the centre of Fort Good Hope.

She immediately left her home and drove toward the smoke, worrying that it was coming from the headquarters of Arctic Circle Enterprises (ACE), where she works.

Unfortunately, her intuition was right.

“The fire alarm went off in the community, and I saw from my house where the smoke was coming from, so I rushed to my work in case it was here, and it was,” she said. “I found out when the rest of the town found out.”

Bourassa is the principal and president of ACE, which specializes in several types of construction and maintenance, and was established in 1998 . The business operates out of a fenced compound, which includes several buildings. The June 28 fire was thankfully isolated to the maintenance garage, but the 17 x 18-metre structure, which has been standing since 2001, was destroyed completely.

“We haven’t been able to go in the building,” Bourassa said. “It hasn’t been assessed by an insurance person yet.

“From what we can see, it will be a complete loss. The beams are melted. Nobody can go into the building, but you can see through the building.”

There were a number of vehicles inside at the time of the fire, and many other important supplies. Bourassa believes everything contained within was destroyed.

“We have all of our maintenance stuff in there — our air compressors, our welders, all of our oils and materials, fluids, belts, extra parts,” she said. “In the garage that night, we had the skid steer, and then we had an excavator that we were doing maintenance on to prepare for the summer brush work. One of our pickup trucks was in there, along with the skid steer. And for me personally, my kids had a little kids’ quad that was also in there getting some maintenance done.

“If this had been in the winter, we would have had everything in there. Given that it’s the summer, most things were outside, thankfully.”

The NWT fire marshal quickly investigated as he happened to be in town when the incident occurred. The RCMP is also investigating the incident.

So far, Bourassa hasn’t gotten any firm answers about what caused the blaze, but noted that she was told the electrical panel and meter are both intact, so it most likely wasn’t an electrical fire.

Given that other buildings in the community have been vandalized recently, she suspects that may ultimately prove to be the cause.

“We would suspect — and this is not anything substantiated — but we would think it’s probably vandalism,” she said, noting that the business doesn’t have cameras on its compound. “There have been a lot of fires this year, but it’s being investigated, so we don’t know.

“One other business had a bed and breakfast burn up within the month, and that was definitely vandalism.”

Barging complications

Bourassa is hopeful ACE will be able to recover from last month’s fire, but is uncertain what the future holds, as she waits for her insurance company to assess the damage. It is also unclear when the barge will arrive in Fort Good Hope, which also makes it difficult to undertake repairs and replace the items that were destroyed.

“I’m sure [the fire] is going to have a really negative impact, but we haven’t really grasped what this means for us,” she said.

She added that the incident has has created some apprehension in the community, which will be exacerbated if it does turn out to be a case of arson.

“It makes us feel a little more vulnerable about our other buildings and other assets in the community that could be set on fire,” she said. “I don’t know if it was set on fire, but suffering a loss then having to think about other things could potentially be lost [is unnerving].”

If there is a silver lining to the situation, it’s that the the community has rallied around Bourassa and her colleagues since the fire. She is grateful for the emergency personnel that helped put out the blaze, and the neighbours that have reached out in the weeks since.

“The response to the fire has been really incredible,” she said. “A lot of people have been helping or reaching out. When the fire occurred it couldn’t have been handled better. There was so much support right away.”

Tom Taylor, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, NWT News/North