Wildfire Evacuation Bankruptcies Are coming
And what the NWT can possibly do about it.
The massive wildfire evacuation I’m currently a part of is a financial nightmare. More than half of Canadians are less than one unexpected $200 expense away from insolvency. Many if not most of >30,000 evacuees faced worse than that on their very first day.
Our return to our communities will be the end of it as far as the news cycle is concerned, but for the NWT, it’s barely the beginning. While flames never reached the heart of the city, economically this will be like a bomb went off. Rebuilding a burned building can be expensive, but at least it’s straightforward. Restarting a paused economy wherein tens of thousands of people just took a big financial hit and a bunch of businesses are tottering near collapse is anything but. Much of the community’s capacity for discretionary spending — what we call consumer demand — has fallen off a cliff. It’s not going to be easy to get the ball rolling again, and what’s left will be a notably poorer city for years to come. At the same time that local residents struggle, their municipal and territorial governments will also face a reduced ability to help them.
Including when the next disaster looms. More crises will come, and the math is going to get worse every time.
