Riveting Thoughts from a Fire Evacuee

May 7, 2023

Fire.

Your mind may drift to a campfire at your property. Roasting hot dogs. Making s’mores. Laughing with friends. Maybe having a cold beverage.

Throwing another log on the fire. The nice smell that comes from burning wood. Not too much smoke. The warmth of the fire around you. It’s just perfect.

It's one of those things that you don't ponder about too often. It just happens.

Then there’s fire.

Ravaging through the dry grasses and forests. Windswept furry of heat and flame. Alerts pinging off your phone constantly for a week. This area is being evacuated. That area is being evacuated. You almost become complacent and numb to the warning pings.

Until that time comes, when the ping is telling you to get the hell out of an area. Your area. The town where you have worked for nearly three decades and staying that night is supposed to evacuate.

It is not a 30-minute put-on-notice-to-be-ready sort of ping.

It is a DO IT NOW sort of notice.

The wildfire in the area has made its way over the North Saskatchewan River. The fire is now heading toward town, only a couple of kilometers away.

It is nighttime. People are supposed to be sleeping. I poke my head out of my clinic where I was staying for the night. There is a steady stream of headlights and taillights heading north. There is one way out of town to head to safety. Yes, there are other roads to get out. But everything funnels into that desired, single-lane, exit road. All others are blocked because of fire.

I scan my clinic. What can I fit in my vehicle? What is important to me?

I methodically move things out of my office and into my vehicle. I move with urgency but also with the realization that it will take hours to get out of town. It is a rush but not a rush sort of scenario for me. I do one last sweep of my office and lock the door. There is the full realization that everything else that is in there could be gone. I may never walk through this same door I have walked through for the past 28 years in service to others. I fully remember the Slave Lake and Fort McMurray fires which ravaged those communities in my province. The devastating potential outcome is real in my mind.

Click. The doors are locked. I get in my vehicle and slowly merge my way into the traffic. It is now almost two hours since the alert came in.

Cars, trucks, campers, boats. All trying to essentially move in the direction of the northeast.

It is a relatively smooth convoy. Moving approximately 7,000 people out of town in their vehicles, single file, creeping at a snail’s pace is no simple task. I come across some sort of vehicle altercation. A dented truck that had been pulling a trailer. The whole rig was in the ditch. A boat was sitting next to the trailer, dislodged, no longer on its non-water home.

WTF people. Move slowly and methodically and you will get to where you are going. Slow and steady wins the race, says the turtle.

As I inch along, I am offered a couple of safe options for a bed to lay my pretty little head. As a plastic tote gypsy, moving around to sleep doesn't even phase me. I decide it would be best to circle back to the region where the fire originated days earlier. It was just on the periphery of the evac zone. But I can lend a hand as they continue to prep their area in case the winds shift or something flares up again.

I arrive around 315 AM. It has been 4 hours since the alert was initiated. I am tired of driving around in a slow circle. There is a nice bed in a holiday trailer in the yard for me. It looks inviting to say the least. I lay down in the darkness, my phone continuing to ping with the alerts as the wildfire continues to spread.

Sleep was short and disrupted. Call it nonexistent. We started the next day...and the next... continuing to prepare the property for any fire that may find its way here.

It's been less than seventy-two hours since that alert alarm. Here are some thoughts which come to mind:

--Although I had recently done a significant purge of items in my life where I had determined what was important enough to remain in my life, I still had to make choices on what would be coming with me in my vehicle.

What I packed into my car were memories and those sorts of items of importance. Pictures, videos, journals I had written, my laptop, and my external hard drives loaded with archives were first and foremost. In the end, those probably don’t matter anyway. They are sentimental in nature, that’s all. Although they are marks of "I was here on this Earth plane", life and time would move on without them.

--I experienced people working together with a common goal. Both where I was working and also stories where people were working closer to town, more in the heat of it all. It is a reminder of what can be accomplished when people work together in good faith of what the end goal is. It was good for me to be involved with this as my most recent experience, I had my good faith taken away from me. When things got tough this time, people banded together and got the job done. I thank the Universe for providing this example to me.

--Unfortunately, there will be some who will have lost their property, their homes, animals, and their livelihoods. I think for the ones who will be lucky enough to come out of this experience unscathed by loss, it will be a pensive time for many on how close they came to losing their home and possessions.

Losing your home and starting with zero.

I sympathize with that. Although I would have been losing my clinic and a place where I stay one or two times a week, it is not my real home. I do understand the emotion that goes with the possibility of losing a home, however. I have experienced that feeling every day since October 18th, 2022. It has been a long and heavy process for me. My heart goes out to people who will experience this. I hope that they have good people in their lives who they can lean on as I have had good people I have leaned on.

--Amongst the good and kindness in the chaos, there are still people who make you shake your head in disbelief and disgust. People looting other people's property while they are evacuated is not cool. Not now. Not ever. In my humble opinion, the best thing to do would be to have them answer questions in a public forum when the citizens are able to return to town. I am sure the local community center would be standing-room only.

--Connection is king and makes the world go around.

I will be looking forward to the more traditional fire soon. Complete with a roasted hot dog. With sauerkraut.

Until then, bring on the rain.