‘FAMILY’ OF CLOSE FRIENDS LURE HIM BACK
Joel Alvarado has been desperately waiting to be allowed back into Fort McMurray ever since he was forced to leave May 2.
“There’s a lot of people just waiting,” he says. “I’m just thinking to go back home, get back to my bed.”
The 31-year-old hotel employee fled the Fort McMurray Chateau Nova near the airport with little other than the clothes on his back, his downtown house spared but his truck burned to a crisp.
The hotel didn’t fare well, either. It burned down shortly after it was evacuated.
After reaching the shelter of the Edmonton evacuee reception centre, he registered with the Red Cross and got a room at the Chateau Nova Yellowhead on Yellowhead Trail, and has been counting the days until he gets to go back.
“When you get a little older you realize your friends are part of your family,” Alvarado said. “I feel like my friends are my family, and I want to go see my family back.”
In the weeks following the evacuation, one by one, his cousins started leaving Edmonton to visit concerned relatives in Ontario.
“I don’t have an ID,” Alvarado says, “So I can’t even take the plane to go back home, to go back to see my family.”
Born in Montreal, Alvarado left his hometown for Kingston, Ont., as a teenager. Around five years ago he, like so many other Canadians lured by better job prospects, decided to head to Fort McMurray.
The northern Alberta oil and gas town quickly became home, his close-knit circle of friends became family, and he was working two well-paying jobs.
That’s the life he wants to return to.
When Premier Rachel Notley announced an optional re-entry plan for displaced residents on May 18, Alvarado immediately marked his calendar, intending to return on June 4.
“There are going to be some changes, for sure,” he says. “But the people are still the same people, like, some people are leaving, some people are going to stay, and the people that are going to stay are the people that care about Fort Mac.”
Although he intends to help with the rebuilding process, he is planning to come back to Edmonton while critical services and infrastructure are restored to the city. After assessing the damage — if any — to his home, he plans to return to the Yellowhead Trail hotel and remotely apply for jobs in Fort McMurray.
“Nova is offering us jobs; they’re like, ‘If you guys want to stay you guys can be relocated to different places and different hotels,’ ” Alvarado says. “I don’t want to be relocated. I want to go back to Fort Mac.”
But he’s well aware of the challenges that lie ahead.
“It’s probably going to be horrible to walk around all the houses burned but, you know, we got to do it,” he says. “Fort Mac is my home. That’s it.”