Residents of Chateh, Alta., flee their homes again as fire encroaches
Emily Rae Pasiuk | CBC News | Posted: May 15, 2023 2:16 AM | Last Updated: May 15, 2023
At this time last year, residents were evacuated because of a flood; now they're fleeing from fire
At this time last year, residents in of Chateh, Alta., were fleeing their flooding homes. Now, more than 750 people are leaving again, under the threat of fire.
The community is part of the Dene Tha' First Nation, which also includes the communities of Bushe River and Meander River.
Chateh was placed under an evacuation order at 6:30 p.m. on Saturday.
According to Dene Tha' Chief Wilfred Hooka-Nooza, 772 people were forced to flee.
"I know a lot of people are probably worried, they're scared and not really knowing what the next move is going to be," said Victoria Semantha, a Bushe River resident who spoke to CBC in High Level, Alta.
"But we've just been trying our best to make people be safe, and feel comfortable enough to trust us in a way, because they're going through this without knowing what's next."
Evacuees have been sent mostly to High Level where the town says they're staying in the gym at Spirit of the North Community School.
"As of Sunday morning, The Town of High Level has welcomed about 100 evacuees from Chateh, with more expected in the coming days," reads part of a statement from the town.
"The Dene Tha' First Nation is working on alternate accommodations for displaced Chateh residents in High Level and it is expected they will be moving out of the school."
Semantha said there were points in time during the evacuation where the fire was approaching and the sky was red. She said it took around eight hours to get everyone registered in High Level.
"This morning, I drove an elder over to Bushe and she just told me she was tired of this stuff, she was tired of being evacuated and she just wanted to go home," she said.
Semantha estimated that over the last six years, the community had been evacuated around four times. Bushe River, where Semantha is from, is much closer to High Level than Chateh is.
"For [Chateh residents], they're two hours away from home. They don't have their homes and they're just trying to make it a home here, as much as they can," she said.
Some 1,100 people left Chateh last year, as water in the Sousa Creeks, basin and surrounding waterways flooded the community.
Chateh is about 850 kilometres northwest of Edmonton.
One resident at the time said the situation was incredibly difficult.
"It was a stressful, sad, grieving moment right there because most of our homes are being washed out," Robby Didzena told CBC in May 2022.
"We are losing our homes to water, to Mother Nature. She's beating us."