Taming
the
Beast
The Fort McMurray wildfire might have been the worst natural disaster in Canadian history. More than 2,000 men and women risked their lives to fight it. These are some of their stories.
The Fort McMurray wildfire might have been the worst natural disaster in Canadian history. More than 2,000 men and women risked their lives to fight it. These are some of their stories.
The Fort McMurray wildfire might have been the worst natural disaster in Canadian history. More than 2,000 men and women risked their lives to fight it. These are some of their stories.
ON SUNDAY, MAY 1, 2016, a few dozen staff of the Wood Buffalo government — the municipality overseeing Fort McMurray and surrounding towns — descended into the belly of Firehall No. 5, a three-year-old building that had never had its emergency operations centre activated before. This was to be their War Room, a windowless box covered wall-to-wall with whiteboards and maps, without a view of the terror that was growing outside. Parched summer weather and high winds had created the perfect feeding ground for the rapacious wildfire that was already too close for comfort. By Tuesday afternoon, just after it looked like those ominous black plumes had retreated, the winds shifted and the fire jumped the Athabasca River, breaching city limits.
Within 20 minutes, evacuation orders for Wood Buffalo’s 88,000 residents went from voluntary to mandatory. It was the biggest escape this country’s ever known. But not for the people in the war room, or for the few hundred firefighters and RCMP, or the private contractors aiding them. They all stayed behind to battle what fire chief Darby Allen started calling "The Beast."
Age: 59
Years of service: 33
Days fighting the Beast: 14
"Fort McMurray has never had a great name, but now people will see it’s a great town with a big heart.”
All told, the Beast swallowed 2,400 structures and nearly obliterated three city neighbourhoods and the hamlet of Saprae Creek. It took over 60 days to contain (thanks to 2,197 firefighters from across the country and as far away as South Africa) but not before charring an area the size of Rome. Once the smoke cleared, fully 20 per cent of “Fort Mac,” the engine of the nation’s energy sector, was ash. It halted oil sands production, briefly wreaking havoc on the economy, and, at $3.58 billion, will require the biggest insurance payout in Canadian history.
So much about the Beast boggles the mind, but nothing is more incredible than the fact that nobody died. Thanks to the heroes who stayed behind, no one was even injured in the wildfire. These members of the “100 Hours Club,” as they’ve become known, are a mix of first responders and those who worked tirelessly to save the city, all while the Beast lurched ever closer. “How we saved 80 per cent of the property while no one was hurt is a miracle,” admits Allen, 59, a soft-spoken Englishman who directed the war room for 14 straight days. He moved to Fort Mac seven years ago. Like tens of thousands of others, he was lured to that northern land of opportunity, with that tainted reputation, known equally for oil money and the drugs it can buy when there’s nothing much else to do. “Fort McMurray has never had a great name,” Allen says, “but now people will see it’s a great town with a big heart.”
Age: 39 | Years of Service: 15
Days fighting the Beast: 13
On top of saving the city, Cpt. Damian Asher was also in charge of protecting “the Brotherhood” — making sure firefighters were fed, rested and hydrated. “If you’re not pissing every hour, you’re not drinking enough water,” he’d tell them. Asher doesn’t recall a single man asking when he’d get to break, when enough was enough. The only question they seemed to ask was, “What more do you need me to do?”
After his crew’s fire truck engine blew up (running 70 hours straight will do that), he got 45 minutes of shut-eye, sleeping on his gear. By then he’d already learned that the home he built with his own hands was gone. “The house is a house,” he says. “The family was safe and the brotherhood was safe. We had to carry on.”
Age: 29 | Years of Service: 10
Days fighting the Beast: 13
Scott Germain and his twin brother Jamie started volunteering for the fire department in their nearby hometown as teenagers, following in the steps of their father, older brother, cousins and uncles. But nothing could prepare them for the Beast.
“It was so crazy that we actually thought the whole city would burn down,” recalls Scott. His crew had one basic order: save as many houses as possible. And they did, driving from block to block in Beacon Hill, retreating only when the flames got too close for comfort.
Behind the black plumes sat his house — out of reach and likely gone. But Scott didn’t shed a tear until the next day, when he saw a photo floating around on Facebook of Jamie, in uniform, hosing down whatever was left of his twin’s house, refusing to give up.
“It was so crazy that we actually thought the whole city would burn down.”
Age: 28 | Years of Service: 5
Days fighting the Beast: 7
A 911 dispatcher on the night shift, Judith Iwaszkiw woke up Tuesday afternoon and stepped out into utter chaos: gridlocked streets and a blackening sky. The medic team requested her for the first time in her career, and by the time Iwaszkiw was on the way, her backyard was on fire. She never saw her house again. Of the few things that survived were lilies, which she plucked and planted at her temporary trailer.
“People come up here and we get used to making good money and forget the value of a dollar,” says Iwaszkiw, who moved from Calgary nine years ago. “The fire is going to make us appreciate the small things again.”
Fort McMurray is like no other place because the majority of people weren’t born here. So the friends you meet become your family. Everyone is so close and the help has been overwhelming. It’s the return of the community that validates any of the work we did. All of this would be for nothing if they didn’t come back. We all worked hoping they would, and they have.
Age: 20 | Years of Service: 3
Days fighting the Beast: 8
The Fort McKay First Nation, 60 km north of Fort McMurray, already feels like one big family, but it’s absolutely true for firefighter Destiny Young. Her father, brothers and uncles have all served on its volunteer department. Young, however, had only fought two structure fires before, and her crew had never been paged to the city. It was obvious why they were getting the call now; the heat of the fire had created its own weather system with 100 km/h winds and “dry” lightning.
“There’s no rain or thunder,” she explains, “it’s like one big static electricity.” But every time she felt too mentally or physically exhausted, her brother would give her looks of reassurance and words of encouragement. “He kept me motivated.”
“There's no rain or thunder. It's like one big static electricity.”
I was basically by myself in charge of procurement. We needed fuel, water trucks, dozers to make firebreaks. The strangest request was KY Jelly and a turkey baster. I said, ‘I don’t have time for your jokes!’ I guess they needed the KY for the thermometers for the pets and the turkey basters to feed them. But the biggest priority was feeding the firemen. That first evening was all about getting them food to eat because everything was closed. We got permission to enter a Safeway and literally just wiped things off the shelf with our arms.
Age: 41 | Years of Service: 20
Days fighting the Beast: 7
Birchwood Trails is an urban park surrounded by five neighbourhoods. If it went, so too would those communities. For three days, Jody Butz worked with forestry, agriculture, and various firefighter departments. As tanker planes made aerial drops, dozers cleared trees as quickly as possible to starve the Beast.
At one point, pilots needed to drop their payload of fire retardant on an improvised target made out of a red blanket laid in a clearance. “That’s what saved Birchwood that day,” says Butz. "The devastation was tremendous in a way I'd never seen, but there was relief because it wasn't all gone."
Age: 30 | Years of Service: 6
Days fighting the Beast: 7
For nearly an hour on the afternoon of Tuesday, May 3, Anthony Hoffman’s job was to keep the general hospital wet and protected from the raining embers. The roof of the building, one of Fort McMurray’s tallest, gave him a bird’s eye view of the blazing city, including his rental condo in Beacon Hill and his childhood home in Abasand, both now engulfed in flames. Hoffman took one picture, called his father, and carried on.
“My job was to keep more people from experiencing what I was going to go through — that was my focus,” he says.
Hoffman will never forget the overwhelming defeat of that first day. “Usually you can sense the progress of a fire scene, and that boosts your morale. But with this, you’re busting it, you’re exhausted, you’re hungry, you’re tired, and you feel like you’re losing.”
"My job was to keep more people from experiencing what I was going to go through."
At the time of the fire, it was about people, but when we returned to Fort McMurray, our sights turned to all the animals. We’ll visit them, we’ll love them, we’ll feed them, we’ll care for them. Sta showed up at the door — and everyone thought these animals were going to be scared or aggressive — but in fact they were waiting for us. Then we started calling to tell people about their pets, and hearing the relief in their voices and their kids’ joy was spectacular.
Age: 26 | Years of Service: 8
Days fighting the Beast: 5
What Chris Relph will remember best is the camaraderie of the Brotherhood — keeping each other safe and crying on each other’s shoulders when, like him, they lost their homes.
"But we're just doing our jobs," he notes. "The water truck guys and dozer guys? If you want to throw the 'H' word around, it’s them. They're just the average Joes that stuck around — right there next to us."
And then there is Relph’s girlfriend, who made a harrowing escape to Edmonton with their two-month-old daughter. She was bumper-to-bumper on a fire-flanked highway. The windshield was cracking. Fire was licking her rims. "That's my hero," he says.
We were evacuated three times during the whole ordeal, but we always went back to protect the firefighter’s water supply. At one point we started hearing 'popcorn' — Pop! Pop! Pop! The sound was propane tanks from the houses. Then we heard a big boom from one of the gas stations. The fire got to 50 metres from our front door. We sat down and said, 'How are we going to get outselves out?' One thing we did was gathered our life preservers and open the main gate–our path to the river. That would have been the last resort, but we would have went for it.
Age: 58 | Years of Service: 17
Days fighting the Beast: 9
Travis Cramer and his 16-person volunteer crew from Anzac, a woodsy hamlet 50 km southeast of Fort McMurray, were paged to help protect Fort Mac.
"There were explosions everywhere," he recalls. "It sounded like a war zone." His phone was also blowing up because Anzac had caught fire and neighbours wanted to know why they’d abandoned them. Cramer clashed with the Wood Buffalo municipality top brass over it.
"If we don’t get back there our community will never forgive us,' he told them. By the time his crew returned, 11 houses were lost; the damage was much worse in the neighbouring hamlet of Saprae Creek, whose volunteer department was also called to the city. "It's all 'McMurray Strong,'" says Cramer, "but there’s been no recognition for these two little fire departments."
"There were explosions everywhere. It sounded like a warzone."
I showed up at the fire hall and told the front desk that I was the emergency management summer student, today’s my first day, and she just laughed at me. But at no point did I think I should evacuate. They kept trying to get me to leave, but if I was useful to them, then I needed to be there. I recently decided to switch my studies and get a master’s in disaster management, so I can do exactly this.
A version of this story appears in the September 2016 issue of Sharp, on newsstands now.
