Northern fire evacuees lost, lonely

WINNIPEG — Marlene Dumas and her family normally gather traditional medicine and food, including wild meat, fish and berries, around this time of year to prepare for the cold and barren winter months.

Instead, the resident of Mathias Colomb Cree Nation is in a Winnipeg hotel — where she has been all summer — because a wildfire-related evacuation is stretching into its fourth month.

“It brings me down. I feel kind of lost because I’m not on the ground,” Dumas said about the disruption to normal life. “We’ve been on concrete for three, four months, and not touching the earth. That affects my mind, body and spirit.”

Dumas hasn’t been able to see much of her family because residents of the First Nation, also known as Pukatawagan, are scattered in Manitoba. Hundreds are in hotels in Niagara Falls, Ont.

“It’s been very hard because that’s my life,” she said of her relatives.

The evacuation was ordered May 28 when an out-of-control fire encroached on the remote northern community. The Canadian Armed Forces helped airlift people to safety.

The fire is no longer a threat, but about 2,200 residents cannot return yet because the community, about 800 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg, has no power. Flames destroyed Manitoba Hydro poles, lines and equipment in the region.

Electricity could be restored the week of Sept. 28, as per Manitoba Hydro’s latest estimate. Essential services must be restored before residents can return.

“To go home and leave all this behind, that’s the goal,” said Dumas, a member of her community’s emergency response team.

Team members gathered Wednesday, like they do every day, in a meeting room at a Winnipeg hotel to provide support to fellow evacuees.

They’ve become a second family while helping each other throughout the evacuation, said team member Irene Mercer.

Her six-year-old son, a Grade 1 student, is starting the school year in Winnipeg on Friday instead of their home community.

“He cries to go home. He says, ‘I want my own room, I want my own clothes, I want my own bed,’” she said. “I tell him, ‘We’re going to get there soon.’”

Mercer misses her daily routine, work, activities such as fishing and foraging, and the ability to make her own meals.

“Some days are good. Some days are bad, but it’s getting lonely,” she said.

Some evacuees feel depressed or isolated after living in hotel rooms for so long, Mercer said.

Mercer and Deanna Brightnose, a fellow team member, are concerned about the long-term effect on evacuees’ physical and mental health.

Brightnose said mental health and addictions supports will be needed in the community.

“We’re supporting each other here, but when we get home is when we really need to pull together and be there for one another,” she said.

Glenn Dumas, Mathias Colomb’s fire chief and emergency measures director, said he believes the evacuation will bring the community closer.

“The resilience, strength and the endurance for survival (of residents) is unmatched,” he said. “I have a great, deep respect for these people.”

This wildfire season is Manitoba’s worst in 30 years, the government has said. A spokesperson said a review is planned.

Mike Flannigan, a wildfire scientist at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, B.C., welcomed those plans.

“The sooner the better because memories start to fade,” he said.

Reviews can help to identify what worked and the areas where improvements can be made, but there have been cases in Canada where governments implemented few, if any, recommendations afterward, Flannigan said.

“That’s what we don’t want. There has to be accountability for these types of reviews,” he said.

Flannigan was an oversight committee member during the Northwest Territories government’s external after-action review of its response to wildfires in 2023.

He would like more governments, including Manitoba, to use oversight committees and publish annual reports on how objectives or recommendations are being met.

Climate change has increased the likelihood of extreme fire weather conditions, Flannigan noted.

“The new reality is we’re going to see more fire and more smoke. We need to be better prepared,” he said.

The province, meanwhile, has yet to decide what to do with the former Manitoba Developmental Centre in Portage la Prairie, where some wildfire evacuees were temporarily housed this summer.

At an unrelated event, Premier Wab Kinew said one option under consideration is turning the site into a permanent evacuation centre for future emergencies, such as a wildfire.

He cautioned the province is looking at a range of possibilities for the site, including housing, and it is early in the process.

Manitoba has recorded 420 fires this season as of Monday (127 were active).

More than 2.1 million hectares of land has burned, second only to 1989’s total of 3.5 million hectares since record-keeping began.

Two people were killed when a fire swept through the Rural Municipality of Lac du Bonnet in May. The Canadian Red Cross registered more than 32,700 evacuees during the wildfire season.

A provincial spokesperson said about 5,468 wildfire evacuees were still displaced as of Wednesday. Of those, 4,615 were in hotels in Manitoba and 812 were in Niagara Falls, Ont.

» Winnipeg Free Press

Since the start of May, 173 charges and 66 warnings have been issued for fire-related infractions, the spokesperson said.

Firefighters from Australia, Costa Rica, Mexico, New Zealand and Ontario are battling fires alongside crews from Manitoba.

» Winnipeg Free Press