PANNIQTUUQ/PANGNIRTUNG - Now that the waters in Pangnirtung are receding and life is getting back to normal, questions are being asked.

Now that a temporary road bridge has been built and the town is functioning normally, senior administrative officer Ron Mongeau said the hamlet is examining the reasons behind the flash flood, as well as the resulting sinkholes that developed on the north side of the Duval River.

"The situation in Pangnirtung now has entered, basically, the second phase, and that is trying to find out what happened here and why it happened," Mongeau said. "That's going to involve a lot of soil analysis, use of ground penetrating radar and seismic. That's what we're doing right now. We're starting to take core samples in that area to try and get a handle on why this happened."

He said surveyors from different parts of Canada along with a permafrost expert from Calgary are in the hamlet investigating possible causes, as well as determining the safest place to construct a new bridge.

"We're trying to get the best people we can find and get them up here as quickly as possible," he said.

Mongeau's biggest concern during the flood was that an urgent situation might arise on the north side of the river where people had no access to emergency services. The second was the sinkholes, which indicated there might be a larger problem.

"Probably the second biggest worry was the cracking and sinkholes that developed on the north side of the river," he said. "That demonstrated that we had an event that wasn't just happening in the river valley, but was expanding in quite an area beyond the river valley."

Mongeau added that heavy rain and melting snow from the mountains surrounding Pangnirtung contributed to the flash flood, but it is still unclear if they are completely responsible for the large volume of water that caused the river to breach its banks.

Nunavut MP Nancy Karetak-Lindell went to Pangnirtung late last month and said the destruction she saw during her visit should serve as a wake-up call both for Nunavut and the Canadian government. She said infrastructure needs to be put into place to deal with environmental disasters because municipalities cannot financially withstand them on their own.

"The federal government is going to have to help pitch in with some emergency measurements to help Nunavut deal with these things, for future planning on the environmental side," Karetak-Lindell said. "With climate change happening, and we in Nunavut constantly saying that we're going to feel the effects sooner than anyone else in the country... it's time to take a step back and start planning for these kinds of emergencies."

Planning for the future will involve realizing that the event in Pangnirtung was not an isolated incident, according to Karetak-Lindell.

"It is a little disconcerting that we seem to hear more about different weather-related incidents and all part of the changing environment we are in," she said. "If this is what's happening this year, what's going to happen next year? What if more communities begin experiencing more permafrost melting every year? How do we mitigate that? How do we ensure there are proper resources in place?"

Mongeau could not say for sure if the incident in Pangnirtung was caused by climate change.

"Many people here believe there's some tie-in with global warming, but I think we're about a week away from getting a lot more information," he said. "We've got some great experts assisting us ... so we hope we're going to get an answer to this sooner or later. Right now we just don't know."

Mongeau said he is not yet sure how much the damage in Pangnirtung will cost the hamlet, but the Government of Nunavut will be paying to build a new bridge to replace the two lost during the flood. The government has pledged more than $500,000 in aid.

-with files from Karen Mackenzie