Wildfire
The morning of May 3, 2016, was a regular Tuesday until it was anything but typical. This was the day a wildfire greeted me at my front door.
I woke up at 4:00 am on this day to make it to my 5:00 am yoga class. After class, I ran some errands and planned to meet my sister for lunch. I had some spare time, so I went to get a tan. The weather was beautiful, and the sky was clear, but some smoke plumes were way off in the distance. I had known a wildfire had broken out a few towns over, so I had already pulled out all my suitcases, loaded up my son’s keepsakes, and took them to my in-law’s house.
I went in for a 7-minute tan, and the sky changed from beautiful blue to an ominous black and red when I came out. Ash was raining down like dirty snow. My phone had 40 messages and missed calls. I drove home as fast as possible, and my in-laws beat me there. My boyfriend, a firefighter at Syncrude Canada Ltd., was asleep because he was working night shifts.
When a Wildfire Welcomes You at the Front Door
My mother-in-law and I started packing things up around the house. There are no words I can use to express my gratitude and respect for her. She had a calm, rational mind compared to my scatterbrained panic state. , I was told that I had to be put in my car four times because I kept going back in to find my sunglasses. My dogs, Raven and Smoke, were in the ca
r with my father-in-law, but I had my cat Stir-Fry with me. My boyfriend and his parents left with some thrown-together belongings, and I drove my car away from my home. Traffic was unbearable, and you could feel the heat from the cat window as the fire grew closer.
I desperately wanted to talk to my sisters, but the power lines were cut off, and the radio stopped broadcasting. In standstill traffic, an RCMP officer knocked on my window, informing me I needed to park my car and walk. I grabbed Stir-Fry, put him in my backpack, and ran up the road about a block. My father-in-law met me, and we went to my in-law’s home to figure things out.
The North & South was Utter Mayhem
The highway heading South was shut down due to the fire crossing. My son, who was 19 then, was on the North side of the city across the bridge. He was with his father, the only thing keeping me from running to him. My son had no fuel in his car, and his dad was out of fuel as well. All the gas stations were blocked solid and running out of fuel.
Eventually, the South highway reopened, but I wasn’t going anywhere without my boy. Nothing in this world could or would have convinced me to leave without him. As I was in the middle of an emotional breakdown, he called and said he and his dad found enough fuel to get out of town. They had gone from house to house looking for jerrycans We were all going to head South. As we were leaving town, I had to drive past the area where I lived, and the entire hill was engulfed in flames. I went through smoke and flames in complete silence and disbelief. All the local radio stations had gone quiet. There were abandoned vehicles everywhere in this post-apocalyptic state where everything was on fire. As soon as I reached the city limits, it was blue skies, not a cloud in sight. When I looked in the rear-view mirror, I saw that black, gray, and red beast. I pulled into my lake lot near Athabasca at midnight. My son arrived at 7:00 am the following day following a sleepless worry-filled night.
The Long-Term Effects
I realize what I’m about to say may sound funny to some people, but at that moment, I felt that the fire had targeted and attacked me. But why me? I wasn’t sure. I felt more emotions at one time than ever before. I still suffer from PTSD, but I will not let this experience strip me of small joys like having campfires with friends and family. I tend to relive my trauma when the sky is smoky from a fire two hundred miles away. I’m working on this.
Fun Fact About Me
I was a volunteer firefighter at Syncrude Canada Limited for 12 years. I was captain of the fire team for 8 of those years. I gave it up when I moved from Syncrude to Shell in 2012. This is the story of the second wildfire I had to evacuate from in my life, but that’s a tale for another time.