Children still affected five years after Slave Lake fire

Five years after a massive fire swept through their town, the children at Centennial Daycare in Slave Lake still all freeze when they hear a siren.

"We heard sirens for three solid days before we left town," explained Sharon Green, executive director of the Slave Lake Childcare Society, which runs the daycare.

Green says the children are also more sensitive to smells, especially the smell of fire.

"They do talk about it, some of those little ones that were just really small when the fire happened," said Janet Parks, who works at the daycare.

She says children who were only toddlers at the time of the fire can remember where they were and what they saw.

The wildfire burned a third of the town down in mid-May 2011, causing an estimated $700 million in damage.

Dr. Judith Kulig studies rural communities that have experienced disaster and is based at the University of Lethbridge. She began her research in Slave Lake by talking to parents who were living at campgrounds while they waited for temporary housing. She heard stories of children wetting their beds again and having nightmares.

But Kulig points out that while some children lost everything — their toys, their clothes, their houses — the children who had the worst outcomes often didn't lose their material possessions in the fire. Kulig says those children might have felt guilty that they didn't lose as much, or they might have gotten stuck on the fire and couldn't move beyond it.

"It means that in a school setting that counselling should be available to all children, not just those that lost the home," she said. "That everybody really is a victim when it comes to a fire."

Remona Gullion and her husband saw their family home burn down in the fire. Their two sons were in Grade 11 and Grade 6 at the time. Remona says they reacted very differently to the fire.

He was lost in the sense where he couldn't feel comfortable anymore anywhere.

She describes her older son: "He was lost in the sense where he couldn't feel comfortable anymore anywhere." He ended up dropping out of school.

"My youngest one, he got to where he got very materialistic when it came to replacing stuff. He just wanted stuff," said Gullion.

She gave him the stuff to keep him happy, even as she knew she was losing her emotional connection to her kids.

Gullion was kept busy herself, pouring all her energy into dealing with the insurance company and rebuilding their house.

"The reason I pushed to rebuild so fast was for them," she recalled. "I wanted them to be settled and to be happy.

 "And in the meantime, I lost my happiness along the way."

 In her research, Kulig has found that after disasters, parents are so busy rebuilding their lives that they become less engaged with their children.

And when the parents are swamped, the children pretend they don't need any help. 

The teachers told us it was one of the worst days in school after the fire.

"Kids are really insightful and they knew that their parents were going through a lot of stress," explained Kulig. "The kids admitted to us -- admitted to teachers -- they didn't want their parents to worry, so they weren't disclosing how badly they were feeling."

Not only that, but some outside efforts to help the families of Slave Lake actually caused more pain. Kulig remembers when the Stanley Cup came to Slave Lake in December 2011.

The children went looking for their hockey sweaters, only to realize they had burned in the fire. Suddenly, they couldn't wear their favourite hockey sweater to go see the Stanley Cup.

"The teachers told us it was one of the worst days in school after the fire," said Kulig, "because what should have been a happy event and make them feel better was actually very difficult for the kids, and therefore very difficult for the teachers and aides."

As cities and towns expand, Kulig says wildfires will happen more often and mass evacuations of communities will continue. She says governments need to create programs that connect communities and prepare them to deal with disasters.

Kulig focuses on community resilience in her research: something there's been no shortage of in Slave Lake. She remembers C.J. Schurter Elementary School and their campaign of hope.

In the school's entryway, there's a giant rainbow mural made up of the kids' handprints with the message: "Hope is in our hands." The Lesser Slave Regional Fire Service used the mural for a children's book they created to help youngsters deal with disaster.

"And when the Colorado fires occurred the year after Slave Lake, a group from Slave Lake went with those books and handed them out to people," said Kulig. "That's a positive story about what can happen from the rubble — from the things that all went wrong and how people can then move forward."