Fort McMurray fire: Three men in charge recall the fight they will never forget
- CBC Interactive: The untold story of the fight to save Fort McMurray
The Fort McMurray wildfire made headlines around the world when it tore through that northern Alberta town on May 3. About 90,000 people fled, while walls of fire towered above them. Two people were killed in a car crash while escaping the fire. But no one died in the flames.
The people in charge of that evacuation were widely hailed as heroes. But some of them are still haunted by that day and the decisions they made.
CBC reporter Marion Warnica was in Fort McMurray when that evacuation call went out and she's gone back to talk to three of the men in charge of the firefighting and evacuation about what went right — and wrong.
Warnica tells The Current's Laura Lynch how the mass evacuation on May 3 came as a "complete surprise" to Jody Butz, the person in charge of operations — the boss of the firefighters — during the state of local emergency.
"We were starting to receive reports, not from forestry, but from citizens, from social media, that they could see flames from Beacon, from the Shell station in Beacon Hill," Butz told Warnica.
It felt like we were losing all over... You just had to assume there were going to be casualties.- Jody Butz
Butz explains at the time the province's forestry department had no information and couldn't say how far away the fire was.
"I did not realize the fire was that close to the city," says Butz about the ferocious speed of the wildfire spreading through the Beacon Hill neighbourhood.
"Given the fire behaviour, 300-foot flames, travelling at 40 feet per second, how long does that take to cover four kilometres? Not long… It turned into a battleground."
I realized - holy s**t. This thing is getting big.- Dale Bendfeld
Dale Bendfeld was the second in command during the fire. He's a former soldier and RCMP officer who served in Afghanistan and the Middle East. He tells Warnica the moment he first saw the flames.
"When I was driving here, I could see the fire was no longer in one particular area, it was covering a whole horizon now. So that changed my mindset. I realized holy s**t. This thing is getting big."
For Butz, the size of the fire became apparent soon enough and the feeling of defeat was real.
"It felt like we were losing all over. Beacon Hill and Abasand are on fire. Waterways is on fire. You just had to assume there were going to be casualties. I couldn't imagine them not being," says Butz.
Am I happy with all the decisions we made and the timeline we did them in? Yes.- Darby Allen
Darby Allen, the fire chief for the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo, feels the same way.
"I really believed at the end of Tuesday, if we wake up at first light and we've got 50 per cent of our homes left, and we've only killed a few thousand people — we'd have done well. That's how bad I felt."
Allen tells Warnica it took him weeks to believe that no one was hurt in the flames, and that they had saved 85 per cent of Fort McMurray, although 2,400 buildings were lost.
As the person in charge, Darby Allen carried an enormous burden. Many have called him a hero but some firefighters and residents criticized how the evacuation was handled.
"Am I happy with all the decisions we made and the timeline we did them in? Yes, I'm comfortable with that. I'm comfortable with all those big decisions. Would I have liked to have done them earlier now? Sure, but I can see what happened now. I didn't know that then," says Allen.
The provincial government has now launched a review on how the evacuation was handled.
Are you a Fort McMurray resident, still putting your life together after the fire?
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This segment was produced by The Current's Karin Marley