The threat posed by the ice chunks and rising waters of the Albany River, spurred the Canadian Armed Forces to land a couple of aircraft in Kashechewan First Nation Monday morning pick up some of the remaining residents in the largely evacuated community.

A Hercules transport plane and a Griffon helicopter were deployed from a base in Trenton to the First Nation located on the James Bay Coast.

Kashechewan is shielded by a dyke system but there have been ongoing concerns about the dykes’ continued resilience against the rising waters and mass chunks ice that are breaking up on the Albany River.

“The amount of water we’re getting from the melt of the muskeg is going all the way down where it meets the Albany River and the water is rising from there,” said Kashechewan Fire Chief Brandon Spence, who helped to spearhead the evacuation of the community.

“Right now, the ice is still going and there is more ice to come downstream towards where we’re living.”

Precautionary evacuations during the spring melt are an annual occurrence in. However, Spence said the risk seems to be a lot more extreme this year.

“Right now, we don’t have flooding on our roads because of the dyke system we have around our community.”

Initial evacuations in the community began more than a week ago.

Spence said many residents resisted the evacuation efforts because they simply didn’t want to leave.

“They believe nothing will happen. But nobody can ever predict what is going to happen and when and where and how.”

Timmins has taken in 349 evacuees, Kapuskasing has 500, Cochrane received 211 and Smooth Rock Falls accommodated 140.

“We’re going to fly a few to Hearst today (Monday) and if it’s necessary we’re going to fly a few to Wawa,” said Spence.

The community is not being completely evacuated.

“They are leaving some workers behind,” said Spence.

Through arrangements with the federal government which is covering the costs, evacuees are being sheltered in local hotels and motels. In Timmins, evacuees are staying at the Senator Hotel.

Spence said the long lead-up to the evacuation allowed officials to make arrangements for accommodation in the communities accepting evacuees from Kashechewan.

“If were to declare a whole-scale state of emergency in the last minute, we’d probably be staying at arenas because of the amount of people per flight. And they would have to look for accommodations and hotels for us a couple of days later.

“This was already set up in February where people would be going.”

Lonny Kates, National Defence public affairs spokesman for the 4th Canadian Division, “As formulated in the Request for Assistance, the CAF is prepared to evacuate the remaining at-risk Kashechewan residents from the affected area and transport them to Kapuskasing and other surrounding towns where the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry will arrange shelter.

“The CAF has been working on evacuating members of the community for a number of weeks.” Kates said, Canadian Rangers were deployed to the area on April 26 to “help with the evacuation, and to monitor the ice flow in the Albany River. Only today (Monday), the Canadian Armed Forces deployed one CH-146 Griffon helicopter and one CC-130J Hercules aircraft to assist the province with voluntary evacuation of civilians.”