Nova Scotia Health pulls wildfire report after minister says she had 'no idea' it was coming

HALIFAX · A report on lessons from the 2023 Halifax-area wildfire has been taken offline by Nova Scotia Health, leaving a resident who contributed to it confused and "shocked." The report, titled 'What the Wildfire Revealed: Learning from the 2023 Upper Tantallon/Hammonds Plains Wildfire: Experiences, Lessons, and Recommendations,' was posted on the health authority's website on Tuesday. It was removed on Thursday, the same day the provincial emergency management minister said her department and others had "no idea" it was coming. The report was based on interviews with residents about their experiences during and after the blaze that destroyed homes in May 2023.

"We have a report that is talking about wildfires and no one in [the Department of Natural Resources] was contacted for comment? That's troubling," Minister Kim Masland told reporters after a cabinet meeting on Thursday. Masland said her department was created out of lessons from the Halifax-area and Barrington Lake wildfires, with improvements including the Nova Scotia Guard and regional emergency operations centres. In a statement on Friday, Nova Scotia Health spokesperson Brendan Elliott said the authority decided to take the report down and "pause" media interviews because the "established approval process for publications and media engagement" was not followed. Elliott said the province did not direct Nova Scotia Health's actions in this matter.

Tricia Murray, a Highland Park resident who lost her home in the fire and was interviewed for the study, said she was happy to see the report published earlier this week. When people started saying the link was no longer working, Murray said she was "shocked" and her jaw dropped. "The fact that they've pulled it down and they're trying to hide this report is, in my opinion … censorship. And it's not OK, because, you know, we have freedom of speech in Canada," Murray said on Friday. "Residents should be listened to and we should have a voice to share our experience. They don't have a right to remove that opportunity."

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Murray, who sat on the community advisory board that helped guide the report, said no one on the board was told it would be taken down. As of Friday afternoon, board members had not been informed if, or when, it would be back online. She said she and others still have copies of the report and will continue to share it. "Although I do question whether or not them pulling it down like this has now created a controversy around it, which will make … people more interested in reading it," Murray said. She is asking the health authority to publish the report as soon as possible and explain why it needed to be removed while Nova Scotia Health finishes reviewing it internally.

The report was done by researchers with Nova Scotia Health and the University of Alberta and funded through a federal Canadian Institutes of Health Research grant. It focused on what residents’ experiences revealed about the broader environmental, historical and social context of the fire and recovery, rather than the operational response. The report paid particular attention to the experiences of the historic African Nova Scotian communities of Upper Hammonds Plains and Lucasville. It offers 18 recommendations for the Halifax municipality and provincial government.

Report recommendations

Those recommendations include acting on known risks around emergency exit issues in the affected communities and reconsidering development in areas of significant risk. They also suggest improving landscape restoration and mental health support. The report urges the removal of land title barriers that can prevent residents in historic Black communities from accessing disaster assistance and fire mitigation programs. It calls for better collaboration between provincial and municipal governments on examining and managing risks. "Our hopes for it being shared very widely and publicly was not necessarily to throw down a gauntlet against these government entities," Murray said. "It was more to be used as a resource to finally hear the experiences of the residents … but also to act as advocacy so that some of these concerns finally get addressed."

With files from CBC News