The Decibel - What it’s like to escape from wildfires

Episode Date: August 22, 2023

As wildfires rage on across the country, more than 50,000 people have been forced out of their homes in Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories and West Kelowna in British Columbia within the past week. And each one of those people have had to make life-changing decisions: Should you leave your home? What do you take with you? What might you never see again?Today, we hear those stories from Canadians on the move from fire-afflicted communities, told to the Globe’s reporters, including Alanna Smith, Mark Rendell and Mike Hager.Questions? Comments? Ideas? E-mail us at [e-mail]

We hit fire beside the road at about kilometer, the 26th kilometer out of town. Wow, how close? It was like, I could hit it with a rock. On the right side of the road? Yellowknife resident Aidan Cartwright spoke with the Globe's Mark Rendell. On the left side of the road at that time. But then as we were going, there was little flare-ups here and there. And yeah, so it's the little flare-ups here and there that we could see um and uh yeah my wife took a

tiny little video evacuating down the highway there's fire literally right there on the side of the highway. And yeah, and the smoke was just like completely, like couldn't see more than 20 yards ahead of the car. Aiden is one of about 50,000 Canadians who've been forced from their homes because of wildfires in the Northwest Territories and in British Columbia, near Kelowna. The reality is that we have climate refugees within our own borders. Today, stories from the wildfire front lines about what it's like to leave everything behind.

I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. It is really hard to understand the scope of Canada's wildfires. Almost 15 million hectares have burned this year alone. That's the size of Lake Superior and Lake Huron combined. It's true that a lot of these fires have been in the bush, since Canada is covered by a lot of forest. But the thing about fire is that it can be unpredictable. When the winds are right and there's lots of dry bush or tinder on the forest floor, fire can move fast. And before you know it, it's on your doorstep. Like in Yellowknife. The Northwest Territories have been dealing with a lot of fires this summer.

Some have been fast-moving, leaving a trail of destruction in smaller communities. And this affected the decision to evacuate the capital. Yeah, well, I think what happened is that Hay River's fire and evacuation was just such a rapid progression. That was on Tuesday or Monday? That's Ryland Johnson, a member of the territory's legislative assembly. He spoke with The Globe's Mark Rendell.

And then Fort Smith as well. So we had two major evacuations, kind of saw a fire move quicker than it had in NWT's history towards a community like that. And then it kind of made everyone rethink the three fires burning around Yellowknife, because they've been burning, a lot of them, for weeks at this point. But they were at a healthy distance and the winds weren't there.

And so I think it kind of went from that, like, zero to, oh, Yellowknife could be put in that Hay River situation where you have people driving out while, you know, their taillights are melting. Last week, by the night of August 16th, officials were worried about the fire pushing towards the city. Unfortunately, our wildfire situation has taken another turn for the worst, with the fire burning west of Yellowknife now representing a real threat to the city. So that night, the evacuation order went out. And that same day, over 2,000 kilometers away, in the area of West Kelowna, British Columbia, there was another evacuation order. For Simon Melanson, that meant it was time to get to work. That night, he helped canvas the area under the order.

He spoke to The Globe's Mike Hager. I was literally a person who was like banging on doors that night. And when I was driving out, there were chunks of firewood falling from the sky. Simon has experience in managing natural disasters. In 2021, he was involved in BC's efforts to deal with the heat dome and destruction of the town of Lytton. But even with his experience, this fire bearing down on the Kelowna region was unlike anything he'd seen before. Imagine a night turned to day, you know. It was just, the glow was so huge.

You could feel the heat. It was like a hurricane and a volcano had a baby. The next day, he was up early to prepare his property as best as he could before leaving town to join his wife and daughters who'd already left. So basically, I ripped out all my land and put it in my hand yesterday during the day, starting at 5 a.m. so that there would be no plants next to my house. and daughters who'd already left. For others, leaving meant thinking about, what could I lose to the fire?

This is Yellowknife resident Chad Hinchey. He spoke with the Globe's Alana Smith while driving to Edmonton. So that we have that stuff for, you know, insurance purposes and making sure that anything that was expensive, that we could make sure that needed to be replaced, all that kind of stuff for like stuff from my childhood that you can't replace, or my wife's childhood. Or, you know, memorabilia, old photo albums. Like, we took basically every photo. Like, our wedding was last year, like a year ago.

So, like, the guest book and things like that. Right. You know, you're just like, how do I replace this if it's gone? But Chad couldn't bring what means most to him, his wife. She works at a hospital in Yellowknife and stayed behind to help. Yeah, it's definitely a bit stressful, for sure. I know that for her, she was really keen on making sure that we were all safe. For fellow Yellowknife resident Aiden, who we heard at the beginning of the show, his SUV was full.

He and his wife, Simone, spoke to The Globe's Mark Rendell. We're at a Toyota Highlander, so SUV with one row down because the dogs are in the back. Two big dogs, two small kids, and three quails. Yeah. Did you say three quails? Yeah. So we had quail that we decided to get, like, a few weeks ago. And I told Simone, here, give the quail some water.

I gave them some food. Hopefully they'll survive. And the next thing I know, they're in the car with us. And I'm like, what? Oh, my God. So there's quails in a cage in the back of the car. They're right beside us. They're in the front here.

They're on my armrest. Oh, my goodness. We had little cheep cheeps like the whole drive. They also had a trailer with them where they packed a lot of things that can't be replaced. We're towing a 10-foot trailer. So we literally put all of our important possessions in. We have my jewelry, we have the kids' handprints, we have

all the stuff. But if the house was robbed or burnt down, it wouldn't matter. I've got a kilt, which is hard to replace. So basically... Granddad's kilt, a baby blanket that Grandma sewed. Basically, what are things that we can't replace?

Anything like that. Anything that's replaceable, whatever. We can buy that. If we can buy it, fine. If we can't, throw it in the trailer. We'll be right back. But how do you pack up an entire city? How do you make sure that no one in a long-term care home or a hospital or living on the streets is left behind? This is what Kieron Testart was thinking about last week. He's an official with the Yellowknives Dene First Nation, which is close to the capital city.

There are some issues, like I got a call from someone who was advocating for a disabled person. They have no means of getting down there themselves. So we're trying to work on helping this person get on a plane. By the end of the weekend, nearly all of Yellowknife's population was gone, except for a few thousand frontline workers. Military planes were brought in to help get hospital patients out of the territory. One of the biggest challenges is just how remote Yellowknife is. For example, the drive from Yellowknife to Edmonton takes about 15 hours. Plus, there's really only one road leading into and out of Yellowknife. That created traffic jams along the highway and at gas stations. Here's Aiden again. We were lucky we brought gas. Otherwise, it would probably have been like a one and a half to two

hour wait just to get gas. And the driving was harrowing. There's like sections where there's big patches just kind of burning, but it looked more like someone's campfire got out of control in multiple spots. Just all these little embers burning. And it looked like hundreds of people were just had little like lighters or campfires in the bushes. Aiden and his wife, Simone, were still driving when they spoke to us. The sheer length of the drive was really starting to weigh on them. It's hard when you're at that point in the drive and your eyes are already so tired,

just being open for like 15 hours or 20 hours. Yeah, you're on such an autopilot. And it's so smoky and the smoke is, you know, the accurate is burning your eyes. For Chad from Yellowknife, who spoke to reporter Alana Smith, one of the scariest moments of the drive was when black smoke swallowed up the highway. It was eerie driving through it. These huge dark clouds that you drove into and you're like, is this going to end at some point? The best way I can describe it is like a dark range road that has no street lights. And you're just like, what the hell is going on? And then he drove through the town of

Enterprise or what was left of it. Until you got to Enterprise and then Enterprise was devastating to drive through. Like it's just barren for, you know, 40, 50K, just barren trees. Yeah. You know, you can tell that the roadK, just barren trees. Yeah. You know, you can tell that the road is just like, or the fire is just torched through there, and then you get through to the town, and the buildings are all gone. Some evacuees got to leave Yellowknife by plane,

like Vivian Hansen, who spoke to Globe reporter Alana Smith. Right now, sitting in the airport. Yeah. Very smoky in this building. What was the, what's the vibe like at the airport right now? Well, it's quiet. People are, you know, Canadians, we just sit and accept stuff. Yeah.

Everybody's just, you know, they're in little groups, lots of tourists, actually. I mean, we do have a, tourism is back. Of course. And I can see, I can see tourism here. Yeah. And they were trying to get out. But getting a seat on one of the evacuation flights took a lot of patience. Only 15 flights from Yellowknife landed in Alberta on August 17th.

The next day, there were only another 25 or so. Hannah Wilson was on one of those flights. She caught up with reporter Alana Smith. I know yesterday their flights were sold out, so kind of seats would come up here and there. So I managed to grab flights for my mom and my sister first. So once kind of those extra flights went on, we were able to book. Yeah, it was kind of like a stressful 24 hours.

As people landed in cities further south, they waited for their bags and were greeted by volunteers handing out water to drink. Yes, please. For sure, here you are. While at the airport, our reporter, Olana, saw a man and woman embracing. That was Todd Hayward and his mother-in-law, Shirley Bonnet.

She'd just landed from Yellowknife. Was it a relief to touch down and see family? Yes, in a way, and in a way, I always thought, you know, obviously it'd be nice to be home. Yeah, of course. And I don't know. I keep thinking, should we have left? You know, or should we have stayed and hiked her down?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I thought we'd better leave just in case. Yeah. Over the weekend, the wildfires slowed down. Since the evacuation of Yellowknife began, the fires only moved a few kilometers closer to the city. In West Kelowna, in B.C., some houses have burned down. But for the most part, fire crews, led by Fire Chief Jason Broland, have been able to keep the flames at bay. We're now four days in. It feels like months.

But things are looking better. We are finally feeling like we're moving forward rather than we're moving backwards. And in the midst of all the chaos of fleeing and fighting fire, people have helped each other get through the crisis. Kieran from Yellowknife witnessed this himself. I've been getting calls all morning from people who have vehicles just wanting to help out, you know, people who are trying to do their part for the community before they take off themselves.

Chad from Yellowknife saw this neighborly help on his drive across the border from the Northwest Territories into Alberta. So I haven't had an issue with gas, but there was like people pulled over or like set up outside of Steen River that were given free flats of water and free gas. Like someone had made a homemade sign like free camping for all vacuees and just, you know,000 people who had to evacuate. And yes, some homes were lost. But 50,000 people got out.

It was a massive undertaking. And yet, there's a question that hangs in the air. Is this what it's going to be like every summer from now on? As Kieron from Yellowknife wonders, is Canada ready for what that could mean? This is really significant what's happening in the Northwest Territories. We talk about climate change in this country a lot. We've seen the catastrophic effects of forest fires and weather events like this, but nothing, I've never seen anything like this. And, you know, it's, people use the words apocalyptic and it feels that way. So I think it's, if this isn't a wake-up call for the rest

of the country, it needs to be. The North needs more resources to fight climate change, to adapt to climate change, and to build up our infrastructure so we're resistant to this kind of stuff. And when the time comes to rebuild. That's it for today. I'm Mainika Raman-Wells. Our summer producer is Nagin Nia. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show.

Adrienne Chung is our senior producer. And Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.