As firefighters and emergency personnel scramble to fight the fire and manage the relief effort for the thousands of people displaced by the wildfire burning in the Fort McMurray area, the community is learning about some of the harrowing stories coming out of the northern Alberta city.
Jeff Pliva has been working in Fort McMurray for about 15 years. He managed to make his way through the city at about 2 a.m., Wednesday morning.
“It was absolutely insane, like an apocalypse. There were no lights so coming through Fort McMurray, everything was still burning right beside the road. It was like you were ready to hit a zombie,” he said describing the scene. “The traffic was crazy, you could have walked on top of vehicles.”
Pliva was living at Noralta Lodge camp north of the city. The camp itself was nearly full with workers, when evacuees of the city were being brought in.
“At midnight there were 5,000 people standing outside the camp with their kids. No one had anywhere to go. They evacuated the old folks home and the seniors were there sitting in the kitchen,” he said.
Fuel was one of biggest issues for people evacuating and cars were left along the road. He has a slip tank on his truck and was able to get another five vehicles down the road.
“It was something I have never seen and will never see again.”
Former Nacmine resident Terri Nichol hauls butane for a living to Fort McMurray. On Tuesday, she felt the heat as she drove her pressurized tank truck exiting the community during the evacuation.
“I haul to the east of Suncor Oil sands, and I had been checking their press releases everyday at 11 a.m., to make sure it was safe to go in there,” she recounted to inSide Drumheller.
On Tuesday morning, all indications were that the plant was safe and willing to a take delivery when she headed out on to the road.
“I went in and unloaded, it took me an hour and a half and when I came back the area was on fire,” she said. “There were places I couldn’t see the end of my truck for the black smoke. The fire melted the weather stripping on my truck. It was kind of like a picture you would see in the movies, all I could think of was armageddon.”
She negotiated the city’s roads as the evacuation was taking place, and in fact wished that she still had a load on her truck because of the heat.
“Butane is like propane, and I thought of this many times yesterday, I wish I would have been loaded because it would have kept my tanks cool. When you are empty it is just vapors and those are very volatile.”
It was tough seeing the devastation.
“On Beacon Hill, when I looked to the right, I could see the houses all literally on fire. The McDonald’s was on fire, the Shell was on fire,” she said. “It was madness.”
She completed her nerve -racking trek back to Edmonton and welcomes a few days off. She has no idea when she will be back to work.
Former Drumheller resident Carla Schneider has some deep ties to the community of Fort McMurray. She lived there for years but moved to Edmonton in 2014.
“We have three couples staying with us in Edmonton who have evacuated,” Schneider told inSide Drumheller. “It took them 13 hours to come here.”
“I learned at about 9 o’clock last night that it was likely our old home was gone and that was very hard to hear,” she said.
She said she has heard from most of her friends in Fort McMurray that they are safe and did find shelter.
She said that her new neighbours in Edmonton knew she came from Fort McMurray and have been supportive.
“They came knocking on the door and asked if we needed anything, I said actually we need another air mattress. Another gave us a playpen because we have five babies here at the moment, and that was great.”
