SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Two mid-morning fire alarms 20 minutes apart at the Yellowknife Airport, forced the evacuation of about 100 staff and passengers on Monday.

The Yellowknife Fire Department was called to the airport at around 10 a.m. and again at 10:45 a.m. People waited outside the terminal as firefighters checked the building for any possible fires.

Steve Loutitt, the airport manager, said the problem is likely to be an electrical issue.

"We believe it's likely a circuit board," Loutitt said. "We had those power outages this weekend and we've had trouble in the past with that."

Loutitt said the alarm system was put on silent mode and it is being monitored closely in an attempt to fix the problem. He added it has airport fire response staff doing patrols in the airport while the system is off line.

"We have to maintain patrols while the system is being looked at, to maintain safety in the airport," he said.

Passengers were waiting to board flights scheduled to fly to other Northern communities, so there were no security delays Loutitt said, adding they were lucky. Passengers scheduled to leave on southbound flights would have been required to go through security again.

"We weren't screening at that time, we had some Northern flights," he said. "When (the alarm) does go we have to start fresh with security. With this one we got lucky."