Premier Brad Wall was scheduled to fly north this afternoon, but visibility was too poor for the premier to make the trip to La Ronge.
Instead, Wall and other government officials were grounded at the Prince Albert airport where Premier Wall spoke to the media about the fire situation.
He said every evacuee who needs a place to stay will have one.
There were some media reports about some evacuees not having a place to stay overnight, something Wall said was an anomaly they will work to prevent in the future.
The premier also spoke to the potential cost of the firefighting efforts.
“We know we are through our firefighting budget for the year,” he said. “But we are not going to worry about that and we are going to make sure people are safe and we will fight this fire,” said Wall.
The premier also let it be known that a major SaskTel asset near Weyakwin that serves much of the north is also threatened by the fire.
“Our fire response has made a priority of protecting that base,” said Wall. “So it is people first and then strategic infrastructure and our folks do an amazing job and I can’t thank them enough.”
Opposition Leader Cam Broten is already in La Ronge after driving to the community last night using the Hanson Lake Road.
Broten says the main thing now is keeping people and communities safe.
“The pressing concern right now, of course, is to make sure people are safe and the right steps are being taken in order to save communities. That’s the immediate, pressing concern for today. I see that work going on. There’s certainly more to do and the provincial support needs to be there.”
Having said that, Broten says he’s been hearing from locals in the La Ronge area that the province’s approach to fighting fires has to be reviewed.
“Looking down the road, as well, we need to have those right discussions about reviewing what policies need to be looked at, what policies need to be reviewed, what policies need to be fixed so that we can prevent the emergency type of situations that we have right now.”
Wall says it’s “incredible to me” that Broten would want to make any kind of political statement today, adding it’s “the height of poor judgment”.