Treaty No. 3 territories cover 55,000 square miles. A number of years ago, every year in the spring, Nishnawbe Aski Nation, which is our neighbour to the north of us, had flooding situations. Then we're followed by forest fires.
Every year there is usually a community that has to be evacuated. When COVID first hit, we were confronted by the fact that some of our municipalities didn't necessarily want to have a number of evacuees come into their urban area. We asked how we begin to look after ourselves. How do we begin to build the necessary capacity within community and within our regional organizations to address some of these situations?
There was a proposal that was developed with ISC region in Ontario. We began to talk about the need to develop emergency management capacity so that we could respond regionally on the ground. Grand Council Treaty No. 3 does have an emergency management coordinator. We have another emergency management coordinator in Sioux Lookout, and one as well in the Fort Frances area, situated at our tribal council.
When you begin to build that initial on-the-ground capacity, what happens is that you begin to identify how you do training. There have been a number of proposals that have gone forward to help build that capacity. We recently completed training in Thunder Bay. What you saw on our website was the completion of that training. We find that, when we have individuals situated, they have a go-to person to go to, so it begins to build that communication and that network. You begin to talk about language.
I didn't know anything about how much sand you need to fill the sandbags or the poly you need to put in place that goes along with the sandbags. Our emergency management coordinators begin to develop that language, and they begin to know how much sand is needed and how you begin to construct sandbagging to protect critical infrastructure such as water treatment plants. You begin to build those relationships around how you do prevention versus mitigation.
Some of our communities knew in advance that they were at risk of flooding through the Rainy River, Lake of the Woods and then into the Winnipeg River. There are seven dams on the Winnipeg River. Knowing in advance as you watch those waters rise and being able to be prepared meant that you had people, boots on the ground, saying that the water just rose two inches. We know that it could compromise our water treatment plant. How do we make sure that we have the sand and that we put the sandbags in place? That only happens when you have the emergency coordinators, and they have the prerequisite training. They're that early sounding board, the canary-in-the-well type of scenario, that knows we have a problem and that we need to act on it.