Avery Haines: No shortage of heartbreaking Fort Mac survival stories
Posted May 5, 2016 2:38 pm.
Last Updated May 5, 2016 6:56 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
CityNews reporter Avery Haines is travelling to Fort McMurray to cover the wildfires that have forced the evacuation of thousands of residents in the municipality of Wood Buffalo.
I’m driving in a rented RV in remote northern Alberta trying to make my way closer to the place where tens of thousands of people have been fleeing for their lives: Fort McMurray.
The stories of heartbreak began the minute my cameraman Pete Dworshak and I got on the plane from Toronto to the closest airport to Fort McMurray, Edmonton.
As we were hoisting our cameras and gear into the overhead compartment, another passenger sweetly offered to let us use her pillow to cushion the camera. She asked if we were going to Fort Mac. When I said yes, she burst into tears. Her husband put his arms around her and they told me how they were on vacation in Toronto and quite literally watched their house burn on TV. They lost everything, except for a few sentimental things an employee managed to get from the house – a sword from her grandpa who recently died, some photos and their two precious cats.
We know that to share the stories that are unfolding we need to get as close to the disaster area as possible. The plan? Rent an RV. A newsroom on wheels.
After a quick lesson in driving an RV, Pete and I picked up supplies. Food. Water. Extra power sources. We have two cameras. A Portable transmitter so we can be live on the newscasts. And our iPhones.
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Our first stop: The expo centre in downtown Edmonton, a beacon for the almost 90,000 people who have had to flee the flames. Three massive stadium parking lots, all filled with cars and people who had to endure what most in our country could never imagine: Having to look around your home, your apartment and pick and choose what you can live without and what you just can’t.
I heard the story of one man who didn’t have a car and waited at the side of the road for hours hoping for a ride, wondering if he would make it out alive. I heard stories of driving through walls of fire on highways, of people being given gas for free. Of communities reaching out and doing everything, anything.
Doing this ‘reverse evacuation route’, I am struck by the handwritten notes on pit stop windows, offering a place to stay, a shower, free food, water.
Fuelling up at one gas station, school busses started pulling up, loaded with weary evacuees who have just been forced to leave the once safe community of Anzac, just southeast of Fort Mac. Chatting with one of the men, he tells me this is his fourth evacuation in as many days. First from Fort Mac, then to an oil worker camp, then to Anzac and now to Edmonton.
We are now less than 100 kilometres away from Fort McMurray. The last 200 kilometres we have only seen a handful of cars (all going the other direction) and haven’t seen a gas station or restaurant for hours.
Even this far away I can see the smoke on the horizon.
