National Post (National Edition)
Challenge 2017: Rebuilding Fort McMurray after ‘The Beast.’
MASSIVE EFFORT AHEAD IN FORT MAC
CALGARY • Erin O’Neill jokes that she’s “a little busy,” which understates the challenge she faces. As operations manager of Fort McMurray, Alta. and the area’s recovery task force, she’s responsible for overseeing the rebuilding effort following the costliest natural disaster in Canadian history.
Economists, city planners and the Alberta government expect hundreds of houses will be rebuilt next year in the fire-damaged Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo, which includes Fort McMurray, requiring thousands of workers and a significant co-ordination effort by the municipality.
After issuing 350 building permits in 2016, O’Neill said the municipality expects to issue between 800-1,000 in 2017 as residents try to reconstruct houses following the fire, nicknamed “The Beast.”
The fire razed 2,400 structures in the area in May 2016 and forced more than 90,000 people to evacuate the region. It threatened oilsands plants and forced their temporary closure, burning one camp to the ground.
The fire grew so much that at one point it was creating its own weather and required firefighting reinforcements from across the country.
All the stores and amenities in Fort McMurray were closed when O’Neill returned after the fire to help prepare for the community-wide reentry and residents were told to boil their water.
O’Neill, who moved to the city nine years ago from Ottawa, said her house was spared though it suffered smoke damage. She was one of the fortunate ones, and is now dedicated to helping the city rebuild.
As residents try to put their lives back together, O’Neill is responsible for coordinating the wider rebuild, which includes reconstructing municipal infrastructure, redeveloping parks and playgrounds and implementing fire mitigation steps to prevent similar disasters from happening in the future.
“I’d rather be over-prepared for that challenge than under-prepared,” O’Neill said in a telephone interview. “I’ll take that criticism from anybody any day: ‘Wow, you guys planned for too much.’”
The residential rebuild alone will be a massive effort. O’Neill said 600 houses were being built annually to accommodate the influx of people into Fort McMurray before the oil price collapse of 2014. The difference between a normal, pre-bust year and 2017, she said, is that in years past, those houses were built in new, greenfield communities where developers were prepared to build the subdivisions from scratch.
Next year, there will be thousands of construction workers building houses in city neighbourhoods where residents are already living, while other crews are working to reopen schools and municipal buildings and relandscape parks — all in close proximity to one another.
O’Neill said officials from Slave Lake, a town forced to rebuild following a devastating fire in 2011, warned officials in Wood Buffalo that co-ordinators with “eyes on the street” were necessary to prevent a rush of construction equipment rolling over curbs, sidewalks and gutters causing more damage.
“In Slave Lake, it was actually more expensive for that repair (to construction damage) than the actual fire cost,” she said, noting the municipality is adding co-ordinators in all neighbourhoods to check for and try to prevent construction damage.
The fire cost in Fort McMurray already makes it the most expensive natural disaster in Canadian history. The Insurance Bureau of Canada pegged the cost in claims at $3.6 billion.
A November report from Conference Board of Canada said it cost oil companies $1.4 billion in lost revenues, while the provincial government estimated the fire added $449 million to its $10.8-billion deficit in 2016.
However, the finance ministry expects the rebuilding to contribute 0.5 percentage points to Alberta’s GDP increase next year, a big chunk of the province’s total 2.3-percent GDP growth for 2017.
The Conference Board predicted that 9,000 new jobs would be created in 2017 for the rebuilding effort, including 5,100 new jobs in the Fort McMurray area, which was among the hardest hit by Alberta’s recession. The downturn in oil prices had forced unemployment rates up to 10.2 per cent before the fire.
“We were in an economic downturn pre-fire,” O’Neill said. “While that was an awful situation to be in, it has actually helped the rebuild because there are people out there available.”
Gilles Huizinga, president of local homebuilding association UDI Wood Buffalo, said “there’s such a push to hire local” among his member companies to alleviate some of the strain in the region.
Huizinga said it’s difficult to predict how many houses will be built because some homeowners are still negotiating with their insurance companies and some people, because of the downturn in oil prices, had let their home insurance payments slide.
Whether it’s 200 or 800, Huizinga said home builders have been hosting home shows — there have been two since the fire, and a third is planned for March — and preparing to recruit workers.
“A lot of these people never planned on building a house,” O’Neill said of the number of home shows planned for Fort McMurray. She said the next one would double as a job fair for home builders.
The regional unemployment rate is now falling — to 8.9 per cent in November — and could fall further depending on how many houses are built in the city next year.
“(The fire) has, in a really awful way, helped that side of things in the community,” O’Neill said.