Emergency response officials say Operation Nanook-Tatigiit will provide valuable insight into how well the city is prepared for a wildfire threat.

It will not only provide a look at the effectiveness of a co-ordinated response from city firefighters, Yukon Wildland Fire Management and the Canadian Army; it will also identify areas that may need to be improved.

Officials held a briefing Thursday afternoon to explain the different exercises that will occur over the next two weeks, beginning Monday of next week and ending June 7.

A simulated wildfire south of the city near Mount Lorne will see the simulated removal of residents from the Cowley Creek and Mary Lake subdivisions to the Canada Games Centre.

That building will be turned into an emergency reception centre organized by the Department of Health and Social Services, complete with beds and services that would be expected of a centre providing shelter to evacuees.

The National Emergency Strategic Stockpile kit – a portable emergency response kit stored at the airport – will be set up outside the Games Centre.

There will be co-ordinated training scenarios involving all three agencies, including training in establishing structural protection for homes with sprinkler systems.

Mock search and rescue scenarios will be conducted.

Teslin will activate its emergency response organization.

“In the event of a real emergency, our response will have to be collaborative to meet the challenge,” Community Services Minister John Streicker told the briefing.

Streicker noted how the Department of National Defence agreed to hold Operation Nanook in the spring instead of the usual late summer schedule.

He said it was appropriate to hold the exercise at this time of year to keep it close to real, because this is the time of year when wildfires become active (there are currently five wildfires in the territory).

Operation Nanook-Tatigiit (Together) provides the opportunity to test a co-ordinated response, to look at interagency communication and such, he said.

Mayor Dan Curtis noted how the threat of wildfire was the highest threat identified in the recent risk analysis of hazards the city could potentially face.

Whitehorse residents have indicated the threat is a major concern, he said. Even he thinks about it laying in bed, the mayor added.

But he also insisted the City of Whitehorse is not sitting idly by.

“Don’t let anybody think we are not prepared,” the mayor said.

In his seven years as mayor, he added, he has never seen a higher level of co-operation between the different agencies.

“I am proud of the people on the ground,” Curtis said.

Diarmuid O’Donovan, the director the Yukon Emergency Measures Organization, said the Nanook-Tatigiit is an opportunity to test each other’s emergency preparedness, and to find those places in the system that need work.

Four types of Operation Nanook are held across the North, he pointed out, adding three of them are centred more on national defence exercises.

He said Nanook-Tatigiit (Together) has been so named because it identifies the exercise as an opportunity for the different levels of government to come together and work together to face adversity in its different forums.

An estimated 140 soldiers with the Canadian Army will be in Whitehorse to participate in the exercise.

As it winds down, a community barbecue and open house will be held at the Games Centre on June 6.

Operation Nanook-Tatigiit is staged every year, rotating among the three territories.

The 2016 exercise in the Yukon simulated emergency responses in Whitehorse and Haines Junction following a massive earthquake.