Slave Lake residents’ message of hope
Devastation awaits in Fort McMurray, but hope lives here.
There is life after a wildfire, after the loss of all you bought and saved, and tended with care. The good folks of Slave Lake, who have rebuilt their lives and community five years after a massive blaze took an enormous toll on their property and psyches, will tell you that it’s true.
They will tell you that the community is stronger, more resilient, its people more willing to help others now, especially when disaster strikes.
And they will also show you that the emotions forever tied to their own shared crisis are never far from reach. The Lakeside Motor Inn on Main Street here caught fire at noon on Thursday. The wind was howling, just like it did five years ago. The fire threatened to jump to the nearby Boston Pizza, and from there, who knows. Fire Chief Jamie Coutts made an intuitive decision to knock the hotel down with a backhoe before things got worse.
But with Fort McMurray in flames, and the five-year anniversary of their fire mere days away, this was already too much for some to bear.
“There were people standing there, watching the fire and just bawling,” said Lana Gutowski, regional manager of the rebuilt Rotary Club of Slave Lake Public Library, which was destroyed in 2011 and has been rebuilt stick for stick.
“It’s hard for a lot of people here still,” she said.
It wasn’t only memories at work, it was their reality.
“It’s May in northern Alberta,” Coutts said. “It’s dry, it’s hot, there’s fires, Fort McMurray happened, the hotel goes up, they see the (water) bombers coming in and out, the helicopters. People get nervous. When you get to May, there’s trouble.”
There was trouble for them on May 15, 2011. With fire on the southeast flank, they fled their homes, jobs, pets, businesses and community with little more than what they could toss into the F150s.
All 7,000 residents were evacuated, 400 buildings burned to the ground and 700 people were left homeless. The evacuation lasted two weeks. They came back to a hellish reality.
“Oh, it was devastating,” said Pastor Sid Chalmers, whose congregation lost its church to the flames. “So sad. Very sad.”
But Chalmers and most people you meet here brighten at the recollection of what became some of Slave Lake’s finest hours in the wake of disaster. And they know that Fort McMurray will eventually get to the same place.
“I think people here are willing to step up quicker to help because of the help we received,” Gutowski said. “I would tell them there’s lots of help and they just need to be open to receiving it.
“There is a strong sense of hope here. We made it through. Those people in Fort McMurray will, too.”
Some people here still struggle. One of Gutowski’s teenage daughters is dealing with PTSD. Oilfield consultant Norm Seatter, who lost his home in 2011, said some people at work were tearing up as they watched Fort McMurray burn, the connection too raw. His wife, Dianne, couldn’t bear the idea of revisiting their fire and declined an interview.
For the most part, Slave Lake has rebuilt physically and emotionally.
Hope lives here because it has no choice. “It has to, right? ... What are you going to do, quit? Life’s not like that,” Coutts said. “Life throws you some hard things and this (is) harder than lots.
People in Fort McMurray “lost their homes, they lost the stuff in their homes, they lost their memories. They’ll make new memories. You can find pictures from your friends and your family and you can build a new home and get new stuff ...
“There will be a couple of weeks of anger. Why didn’t you do this, why didn’t you do that? Then it turns into some hope and let’s rebuild and let’s get together, stop being mean to each other and start being nice to each other.”
The damage has been estimated at $9 billion, nine times what it was here, so the scale is hard to fathom. But both communities are thankful that loss of life was extremely low. A helicopter pilot died while fighting the fire here. There were two fatalities in a two-vehicle crash on Highway 881 during the Fort McMurray evacuation.
“Being thankful is a big part of getting through it because there is always something to be thankful for,” said Norm Seatter. “It is what it is, whether somebody did something wrong or not. It doesn’t change where you’re at. It is what it is. So look for the things to be thankful for.”
Mercies large and small exist everywhere. The houses are new and bigger. The library is full of 37,699 items, up from the 10,000 before the blaze. Donations poured in from all over Canada. Parts of this town are indeed stronger.
“When is it OK?” asked Mayor Tyler Warman, a volunteer firefighter who has already seen duty in Fort McMurray. “I think for every person it is different.
“I think some people it’s in the back of the mind, it’s a memory you never forget, but I’ve moved on, and life is better and we’re stronger. I think other people, especially (with) this incident in Fort McMurray, it’s a touchy subject. I don’t know, will they ever get over it? The majority though I have to say, are doing well and have been for quite some time.
“But to tell people in Fort McMurray that, right now, I wouldn’t have convinced my own residents back then and I can’t even imagine how we would convince them now.
“It’s a long road. It takes a lot of endurance. It takes a lot of money, it takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of patience and it’s a frustrating process for sure. But it will get better.”