10 Years After "The Beast": Remembering the Fort McMurray Wildfires

It was nicknamed “The Beast”—the massive wildfire that ripped through Fort McMurray, Alberta, in May 2016. It forced the entire city of almost 90,000 people to evacuate and spread across approximately 590,000 hectares—an area larger than Prince Edward Island. 

For this episode, we’re marking the 10-year anniversary of the fire by talking to officers and Salvationists who were there in Fort McMurray when it happened; people who experienced the evacuation and the pain of loss firsthand; people who were part of the Army’s emergency disaster services response, both during the fire and long after it ended. How did they experience that fire, as individuals and as a church? What has been the key to healing after this devastating event, and what is the legacy of the fire today?

This episode features:

• Verna Thomas-Winsor, a member of the Salvation Army church in Fort McMurray, who lost her home and more;
• Major Steve Hibbs, corps officer in Fort McMurray in 2016, now retired and still living there; 
• Majors Bond and Marina Jennings, assistant corps officers in 2016; and
• Captain Ian Scott, who led the Salvation Army EDS team during re-entry following the evacuation.

Transcript

Kristin Ostensen

This is the Salvationist podcast. I’m Kristin Ostensen. It was nicknamed “The Beast”—the massive wildfire that ripped through Fort McMurray, Alberta, in May 2016. It forced the entire city of almost 90,000 people to evacuate—the largest wildfire evacuation in Alberta’s history. And before the fire was finally declared under control, it had spread across approximately 590,000 hectares. For context, that’s an area larger than Prince Edward Island.

Steve Hibbs

Driving through the city was like someone had dropped a bombshell.

Marina Jennings

I remember standing in the middle of our home and saying, OK, what matters here? If I come back to nothing, what are the things that need to go with me?

Verna Thomas-Winsor

We had only been in our house roughly five years, so to go in and see my entire street wiped right out—not a house standing. It was, yeah, something to see. It was crazy.

Kristin Ostensen

On this episode of the podcast, we’re marking the 10-year anniversary of the fire by talking to officers and Salvationists who were there in Fort McMurray when it happened; people who experienced the evacuation and the pain of loss firsthand; people who were part of the Army’s emergency disaster services response, both during the fire and long after it ended.

We begin with Major Steve Hibbs, who was the corps officer in Fort McMurray at the time. In the early days of the wildfire, he was part of the EDS team serving firefighters at a local fire hall, and he remembers the day of the evacuation, May 3, feeling somewhat ordinary.

Steve Hibbs

The atmosphere was work as usual. We had been battling the fire for a day, or maybe a day and a half, and we had been in a different part of the city, thinking that all of this was going to be under control and going to be done away with by, maybe the end of the week. So the atmosphere was—the evacuation wasn't talked about very much at that time. But the atmosphere was, Well, everybody's going to work, doing their thing, still keeping one eye on work and one eye on the fire, because we were kind of feeling we were getting boxed in. But we had all confidence that this was going to be OK. My wife and I left one of the fire stations and went for lunch. And while we were at lunch, we looked out the window of the restaurant and said, “Oh, we best get going,” because this is now gone from something that was minimal to something that's absolutely massive, because we saw this massive red cloud just hoovering over the city. So, we kind of left our lunch on the table and—we did pay [laughs]—but left our lunch on the table and headed back to the fire hall. And on the way back to the fire hall, as we were driving through the city, we said, “Oh, this is really bad, really bad.”

Kristin Ostensen

Oh wow.

Majors Bond and Marina Jennings were the assistant corps officers in Fort McMurray at the time. They were also part of that early EDS response, and remember the tension building in the city as the fire closed in.

Marina Jennings  

So, I actually was home sick on the Tuesday, the day of evacuation, and it really started like a normal day. Bond had gone at six in the morning to do breakfast for the firefighters, and I said, “I will stay home. At lunchtime I'll go to the centre and get the meal that's prepared and bring to the truck.” Well, that never happened. It was interesting, because initially I think people were like, yeah, there's a fire. The firefighters are taking care of it. But as the day progressed, there were alerts on the radio, and you could feel the tension rising as certain areas of the city were being told to evacuate. And it wasn't long before, honestly, that tension kind of, you could see the switch from this sense of, OK, there's tension, but then almost panic as the day went on. I would say it went from being a very normal day to a very heightened sense of emergency very quick.

Kristin Ostensen

Verna Thomas-Winsor is a member of the Fort McMurray Corps, as well as the church’s administrative assistant. For Verna, the fire evacuation experience was greatly complicated by her family situation. Her husband, Quinton, was in the final stages of his battle with cancer; the fire and the evacuation couldn’t have come at a worse time.

Verna Thomas-Winsor

My husband had cancer. He was stage four by the time we found out he had cancer. And so actually, what was happening in the city, and what was really happening around me was kind of not that important, because what was important to me was what was happening in our house, dealing with my sick husband. His mom flew in to spend some time with us, so she'd go out on the back deck and she's like, “Oh my goodness, there's smoke. You gotta come out and see the smoke” kind of thing. So, even then, I was like, “Oh yeah, but that's in the distance” kind of thing, ‘cause I didn't take it that serious at that time. So it was actually my daughter, who had flew in from Winnipeg that that morning. She was like, “Mom, you're going to have to start getting some things together. I think we'll be evacuated today.” And I'm like, “Don't be silly. Everything's going to be fine, going to be great.” And because Tuesday morning, May 3, started like every other day. It was a beautiful, sunny morning, warm, and it wasn't till, like, a little bit—I don't know, we'll say, maybe 10 ish—you start seeing a little bit, smelling a bit of smoke and stuff. But it was a beautiful morning, and I didn't think anything of a fire. By this time, my husband was bedridden. He couldn't walk anymore, so to move, you know, was a big deal kind of thing. So, the ambulance drivers actually came to check in on us and stuff, and they're like, “He's better off staying here, because right now you're in the safest part of town.” They said if we bring him to a hospital, he's probably, he's going to have to be moved again. So it's better to leave him here till he has to be moved. So, the ambulance driver showed us what to do to get him out of the house, because it's a two-story house. And they were saying, “Wrap him in a blanket and do this, do that” kind of thing. So my son-in-law and his dad and our friend were there and were, you know, taking his instructions, just in case we had to leave. I had talked to our corps officer, Major Steve, and they were telling me how they'd been in the lineup now for hours. And I think most people that day were in the lineup for, like, 3, 4, 5 hours. It was insane. And moving like car lots, basically, because everything was gridlocked. So we were like, we can't go anywhere because we can't—you know, it was better for him to be home in bed than in a vehicle. So we waited till that last call came out: Everybody get out. Once we got that notice, my son-in-law and his dad and a friend of ours got Quentin out in the truck. When we left our house till we got to safety was about 35 minutes. And this kind of makes me a little emotional, because I always say, you can't tell me God wasn't in it, because God opened a way for us. There was everybody else in lineups for like, long, long times. But God knew Quentin couldn't be just sitting in a vehicle, like, five hours. He knew Quentin needed to get out as fast as he could, and God opened that roadway that day. And it took 35 minutes to safety. Now, then we still had a long drive, because we ended up going to Lac La Bish that evening. Yeah, so we left around seven. We didn't get to Lac La Bish till after one in the morning, which would be, like, two, maybe two-and-a-half-hour drive, normally, but it took us forever to get there because of so much traffic and stuff, right?

Kristin Ostensen

There is one highway going through Fort McMurray, the 63, going north or south. With the fire threatening—and then engulfing—different parts of the city at different times, evacuees were directed north or south depending on what was safest at the time. For some families, however, that resulted in separation. Major Bond was still serving firefighters with the EDS truck when the time came for them to evacuate.

Bond Jennings 

Shortly after six o'clock, my worker, Trudy Malone, in her car, headed south, and I headed south in our community response vehicle going out to Anzac, which is approximately 15, 20 minutes from Fort McMurray. When I started driving, the police directed me on Highway 63 to drive south in the northbound lane, because there was nothing coming north. So, I did that for a while, and then I crossed over and went to Anzac. But it took me approximately an hour or more to get out to Anzac because of the traffic that was going south. It was scary moments, because in the process of all of this, so many people using their cellphones, also I think the smoke was playing havoc with reception—I had very little communication with Marina and our family. So the last report I got from them, somewhere around six. Timelines just are a blur. They were supposedly heading north to the sites, but had been redirected south at one location. And that put a scare into me, because from hearing the firefighters talking, the road that they had to pass through in order to go south was literally on fire. 

Marina Jennings

So I was at home, and it's interesting, as you look back at it. I remember standing in the middle of our home and saying, “OK, what matters here? If I come back to nothing, what are the things that need to go with me?” So, I'm going around the house, gathering up things that have sentimental value, and also trying to be in contact with Major Steve and Elaine because they had actually been evacuated long before. Our neighbourhood never, ever received an evacuation notice, but Steve and Elaine had at one point. So they were busy getting to their family, and so just trying to be in communication so that we were all on the same page, knowing where each other was. And, of course, we had employees that were scattered all over Fort McMurray with our different programs. We had the START program, which is a program that takes care of adults with developmental disabilities. And so you can imagine just the whole panic of trying to think about your own circumstances, but also your mind on all of these other people who now have such huge responsibilities. We were separated—I was concerned about Bond. He was south of the city, and yeah. So it was just like this, honestly, it was a feeling of panic, and in a lot of ways, not knowing next steps, because there were so many different aspects—your employees, your family, yourself just being able to get to safety.

Kristin Ostensen

Major Steve and his wife, Major Elaine, were diverted north on Highway 63, where they found refuge at one of the oil camps, along with 3,000 other people. What was normally a 20-minute drive took them nine hours. But their stay at the camp didn’t last long.

Steve Hibbs 

So, we got evacuated on Tuesday. On Wednesday, we were at Roof Lodge, and the authorities came on the speaker phone and said, “Just to let you know that the fire is coming towards us, so we're going to have to move the families with children further north and get them to the private air base up there that belonged to the oil fields and start flying them out,” because there was nowhere else to go. That was the end of the road up there, OK. So now we were boxed in—end of the road one way, fire the other way. So, but the priority was families with children, so we assisted the authorities up there, making sure all the families were on busses and moved further north to get them flown out. And they flew them out to Edmonton. On Thursday, we were told—and we worked with the authorities as The Salvation Army up there—we were told that we're going to try to move vehicles back through the city with 50 cars per section, right? We could get 50 cars through per section. Then, by the end of Friday—that was Thursday—by the end of Friday, we could have everybody moved from north to south, so we'd have that kind of pressure taken off. So all then through Thursday, we were moving cars out through the city with RCMP and fire department assistance, through the city to get them out, through, and that was about a 45-minute drive through the fire, OK? And all we were told to tell the people was, when you're driving through—because you were escorted by the RCMP and by the fire truck, which was a water truck that was pouring water on the pavement to keep the pavement cool so your tires wouldn't explode as you're driving through. 

Kristin Ostensen

Wow.

Steve Hibbs

It was like a war zone. So, that's what we were told. If your tires explode while you're going through the city, just move your car to the side and jump into the vehicle behind you, until you got out of the city far enough that other arrangements could be made. So that was Thursday. Friday morning, at six o'clock, we were part of that 50-car convoy that went through the city. They wanted us out so that then they could kind of close the camp. So we were kind of the, not the last convoy, but towards the end. So, we're driving through the city, and I will tell you, driving through the city was like someone had dropped a bombshell. It was total destruction. Fire was all along the highway as we're driving out through the city. All along 63. We had to stay to the middle of the road because the flames were to the right and left of us. Smoke was just unbelievable, right? I said a couple of times to my wife as we were driving out that I expect Arnold Schwarzenegger to show up in this smoke, anytime at all. It was that kind of destruction that was there, right? 

Kristin Ostensen  

Almost felt like a movie, it sounds like.

Steve Hibbs

Absolutely, absolutely. And we're going through and we're seeing all these houses and everything being destroyed as we're going. Cars being on fire as we're driving through the highway there. And city busses off in the ditch that just couldn't handle it anymore, you know. So, they moved us then. For us as a family, we were all transported north from there. Three of our family were flown out the day before, and they flew to Edmonton, and then we all connected on a farm down around Edmonton for a couple of nights. And then The Salvation Army made arrangements that we would move to Pine Lake Camp, and that's where we were for a week before we came back to assist with the first responders.

Kristin Ostensen

Yeah, wow. What was it like going through that as a congregation, that evacuation experience?

Steve Hibbs

We had all of our congregants, all of our congregation members, in our cell phones, both my wife and I, so while we're traveling north, away from the fire, we're reaching out to these people and saying, “Are you OK? Where are you? Please reach back. Let's stay in contact with each other so we'll know where you are and what's happening.” So that started from day one really. You know, “Did you find any lodging during the evacuation? Are you still stuck in the traffic?” So we kept in contact from day one right on through until the days we came back together with our congregation. Our greatest fear at that time was the homeless population that we were responsible for, and Major Bond and Marina Jennings were great help in that. But that was a great fear, and our group homes, right? Because even though we had emergency plans put together, our emergency plan was to get out of that building and find another place in the city that would help us. We had not had a plan in place to evacuate the city, OK. So our evacuation plan was limited. But we're so grateful that several communities reached back to us and said, “If you need help, we can do this. We can offer this. We have this residence, we have this facility that we can make available to you as soon as you need it.” So that was a great help and relief to us. Getting them from point A to point B proved to be a challenge because the busses from outside the city weren't allowed to come back in, and those in could only make one trip out. But it worked in our favour—not without a lot of work, of course. So thankful to the staff that we had at that time that, really, everybody did a phenomenal, phenomenal part in making this all work.

Kristin Ostensen

Majors Bond and Marina ended up in Edmonton, where they stayed for around five weeks. Verna and her family went to the hospital in Lac La Bish, as Quinton was in desperate need of medical care.

Verna Thomas-Winsor

The drive down was way too much for him, and he was in so much pain. So, we went on to the hospital, and, oh my goodness, I have never been treated any better in my entire life than I was that night. Like I always say—God had angels in Lac La Bish Hospital. They were absolutely amazing. And when we got there, they didn't realize how sick Quentin was, and I didn't think I needed to tell them, like, you know what I mean. And anyway, when we got there, the nurses came in with a wheelchair, and was going to, you know, help him in and stuff. So then we get him inside, and they're like, “So he's going to stay here tonight. Where are you going to stay?” I'm like, “What do you mean? Wherever he's at, I'm going to be right beside him, because I'm not leaving him anywhere.” Said, “Oh, no worries, we'll have a little cot by the side of this bed for you.” And they looked out to us so well; they were amazing. So, like I said, looking back now—at the time, you're going through everything—but when I look back over now, I'm like, God had angels everywhere we needed them, definitely. So then Wednesday, my daughter would be checking Facebook and stuff, you know, and listening to news and stuff. I kind of listened, but not much, because my main concern was my husband, and anyway, my daughter was checking the news and stuff. So then this is Wednesday, we didn't hear anything. So, Thursday, again, she was checking, and there was little video clips of Fort McMurray—like, the areas that were burned and stuff. And so, my street showed up on there. So, it showed, like I said, it was devastating, but, you know, and I was like, looking at it, and I guess I thought I saw our house, and I said, “Oh my goodness, my house is still standing.” She was like, “No, Mom, you should look at that again. Your house is gone.” And I'm like, “No, no, I saw it. I saw it.” So she did go back and look through the video and went slow. And everything from our house—like, our house, everything was gone. But we had a little garden shed in the back—our little garden shed was still standing. And we had a retaining wall, and we had our fire pit out back and stuff. And there was nights, like, because both of us loved entertaining and having friends over and stuff. And there was nights at that fire pit, we probably had 30 people out there, sing-alongs and stuff. When I came back from the fire, after everything was gone—my house, our convertible, our motorcycles, whatever we owned—everything was destroyed in the fire. But in the backyard, that fire pit, there was a chair there with material coverings on it. Wasn't even one burn hole in that chair, not one burn hole. I was like, this is holy ground out there, I tell you. It was amazing.

Kristin Ostensen  

Wow. I can't even imagine what it would be like, truly, and to see it, to find out via a social media video—like, the levels of surreal.

Verna Thomas-Winsor

Well, we found out about 2:30 on Thursday, May 5, that everything we owned was gone. But, I mean, Quentin was so sick by that time, I didn't want him to know, because his main concern was that I was being taken care of. So I was like, that's only going to upset him even more. So I was like, Don't be talking about the house—like, the house, if it's gone, it's gone, we can't do anything about it. We're just focusing on him now. And like I said, we found out about 2:30 on Thursday, May 5, that the house was gone. And then 1:15, May 6—which was less than 12 hours after—he passed. You realize real fast that material things mean nothing when you lose such a very important part of your life. We were married, would have been 29 years in July, as he passed in May. So just under 29 years, we were married, and yeah. It was a rough time, for sure.

Kristin Ostensen  

Yeah, I'm so sorry for both of your losses. It's an unfathomable loss, but how did you come through that? How did you experience God being present with you in that time, and what were sort of your sources of support at that time?

Verna Thomas-Winsor

Well, I thank God, like I said, for a Christian mom, and all my family were Christians. But my mom had lost my dad a few years before, and she was, naturally, my go-to, to go talk to for encouragement and stuff. But my mother-in-law, God love her—I don't know what I would have done without her at the time, because she came to spend time with us, and she was like, anytime everything seemed too serious, she would always say something, a little bit of humour that we definitely needed at that time. And like I said, she stayed with us till, you know, Quinton passed and everything. And while we couldn't get back to Fort McMurray, but he did want to fly back home to Newfoundland to be buried and stuff. So, he passed on Friday morning, 1:15. So, here we are now trying to get flights back to Newfoundland, trying to get everything all taken care of. So we get back to Newfoundland. So then, like I said, it was nice, because I do have a lot of family back there, so they were so good to us. I don't know what I would have done without, you know, the support of family and friends and our corps officer. They were calling and texting to check in on Quentin and stuff, checking in on us and that. And so, like I said, I’m so thankful for family and friends and our officers at the time. They were amazing. And yeah.

Kristin Ostensen

Verna’s home was one of around 2,400 structures that were destroyed by the wildfire. It was a devastating experience—one she shared with a number of people connected to the Army in Fort McMurray. During the evacuation, the four corps officers continued to offer pastoral care, however they could, even at a distance.

Marina Jennings

So, we had 12 people, either from our corps or employees, who lost their homes. It was very emotional. So when we evacuated—and people scattered everywhere, right? You had people in Calgary, people in Edmonton, people in Red Deer—people were just everywhere. So, I know that, for employees, we actually started a Facebook page where we could just connect with each other, which was really helpful. But that first Sunday following the evacuation, Edmonton Temple actually gave us the afternoon to have time together as a corps and to worship together. And that was very meaningful and very helpful, I think, with our own sense of loss and just—you know, the trauma you experience when you go through disaster, you don't actually realize it when you're when you're in the immediate moment, right? It's the after effect where it really hits you. And so, I think that was really good.

Kristin Ostensen

While firefighters worked tirelessly to put the fire out, Salvation Army EDS crews were also on the scene, providing practical support such as meals and drinks, as long with emotional and spiritual care. More than 200 Army employees and volunteers took part in the EDS work during evacuation and re-entry. Captain Ian Scott was one of those workers. He was deployed twice—first arriving in Fort McMurray about 10 days after evacuation. For his second deployment, he was brought back to lead the Salvation Army EDS team throughout the re-entry period. It was a huge operation, with many moving pieces. The corps was transformed into a reception centre for residents returning from evacuation, and the Army assisted thousands of people—providing information and practical help such as food and household items; as well as a listening ear and a shoulder to cry on.

What a huge responsibility after, you know, after the horror of the fire, and then people coming back. I mean, you have a sense of the seriousness of that opportunity. And I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit, especially for people who don't have that behind-the-scenes knowledge of what's involved in an EDS response, can you talk about what being the incident commander involved for you in this operation?

Ian Scott

Sure, yeah. I would say, first of all, it wasn't really incident commander as much as being part of a team that went up. At the time we were, you know, I think the official incident command was through Perron Goodyear and Aubrey Vincent and those folks at headquarters. And so, this was really the on-the-site team that led, that I was got to be a part of. And really it was co-ordinating how we were operating with the other groups, what we were doing with the other agencies that were up there, and how was our information and our needs being communicated back to divisional headquarters. So, I think for the areas that we looked at and what we were responsible for, you know, as anyone who's been on a response would know, you know, there's 1,000 things to do, and they all have to be done right now. So there's that intensity of things needing to happen, but then they change. And, you know, so if you wait too long, you've missed your opportunity, and something else has come up, and it may be more or less important. But really what we were asked to do on the second trip up was to co-ordinate the volunteers that we took with us. So we took a large group of volunteers from the Alliance Church and from the Pine Lake Camp and some others, and we had to get them set up at the various reception sites around the city so that when people were returning home, there was about three or four different locations they could go to, to get, you know, to get information about their power and their water, whether or not their house was still standing, access to the different services that the residents needed. So, we were really set up with, how do we co-ordinate having the appropriate number of volunteers at each of these sites? What did we need to have there? And then also responding to what the operations centre wanted from us. So we would meet with the operations centre every morning, and they would ask us or tell us what they needed from us. And then the other piece that came in that, was really looking at the other groups that were up there. So, you know, emergency social services was up there, Samaritan's Purse was up there, all those other different groups, the Red Cross, of course. And so also being that liaison between The Salvation Army and those other groups, and—were we able to work together? Were we duplicating? Were we needed in the same place? And then, like I say, of course, the emergency information back to headquarters. So we sent our reports down to public relations. And, you know, Major Pam Goodyear was able to use that information for her reports to the public and to the media, making sure that we had the information we needed. I think the other thing that really came up during that time in my role was to—Major Steve Hibbs was the corps officer at the time, and one of our duties was to free him up so that he wasn't involved in the day to day. We really wanted Steve to have the ability to connect with the media, to connect with his relationships that he had already developed in the community, so that we were really able to allow him to function as a Fort McMurray Salvation Army officer and not have to worry about whether or not people were getting water or food or all those different things, and really sort of giving him the freedom to go where he thought he needed to be and to spend the time doing what he needed to do, because he was the one that was going to be there afterwards. And so we wanted to make sure we gave him room to do whatever it was that, you know, that he needed to have done, without the worry of looking after all of us. 

Kristin Ostensen

That built-in partnership with EDS was essential for the officers in Fort McMurray, to ensure that they were in the best position to serve residents, as Major Steve notes.

Steve Hibbs

Ian was an absolute gem to help us with this. He was kind of our right-hand man. Major Bond and Marina Jennings, they were absolutely feet on the ground and knew what they were doing. So to be part of the national, the provincial and then the local EDS team. You all had to realize that, we all had to come together. We all had to collaborate. We all had to be on the same page all the time. So there was constant communication with that. So while we worked with the Salvation Army EDS team, we also had to work with the provincial and the local EDS team, which was, again, a wonderful learning experience—groups that came in from across the country, right from Newfoundland to B.C. and the territories. I mean, there was hundreds and hundreds of volunteers that came to help The Salvation Army. So, it was a well-oiled wheel that worked phenomenally, absolutely wonderful. 

Kristin Ostensen

Yeah, yeah. And from a corps officer perspective, once folks started to come back in, how did you kind of reconnect with people, and how were people in the church affected by the fire?

Steve Hibbs 

One of the things that my wife and I was assigned to was that as people—not just Salvationists—as people were coming back in the city, they were brought back in, once they came back to the city, they were assigned to busses in the city, and they wanted us to be on some of these busses to sort of—I don't know if counsel, console, power of presence there, because they would have been taken through their neighbourhood, where many of them would have lost their homes, so you were sort of that shoulder to lean on. So, we became a pastor, chaplain on the ground during that time. As for the Salvationists, we kept in contact with them, because our church was used as a drop centre, so we didn't bring people back together until late summer, because our church was a place where people would come and get everything from household products to bedding to personal hygiene stuff. So we were that drop center at the corps there. So, we had church every day. [laughs] We had church every day with it, right? So, thousands of people would have gone through that, gone through our church during these times. For us, for our congregation, we constantly kept in contact with them, through the phones, and it was interesting, even though some of the people had lost a lot of stuff—because what wasn't destroyed by the fire was destroyed by the smoke. That was hard on them. But at the same time, you know, we Salvationists are strange people, aren't we, in the sense that you're listening to what they've lost and they're saying, but how can we help? You know, what can we do? So, I think everybody just did what they could, the best they could. But we did keep in contact with each other, and they did with us.

Kristin Ostensen

Even knowing ahead of time that her house had been destroyed, going back to Fort McMurray was a shocking experience for Verna.

Verna Thomas-Winsor 

I think that's when reality set in, kind of thing. Because you knew, like, OK, my house is gone. You see pictures of it, but till you actually stand and, you know, stand where your house was actually at. It was—when I first got back in Fort McMurray and driving through town, I was like, Oh my goodness. It was just like driving through a war-torn country. It was like, Oh, my Lord. You just could not imagine; pictures did not do justice to what you actually saw around you. It was crazy. My area of town was, it was a new area. We had only been in our house roughly five years, so to go in and see my entire street wiped right out—like, not a house standing—it was something to see. It was crazy.

Kristin Ostensen  

Wow. Now, of course, you're a part of the larger corps family, and I'm wondering, as a member, and obviously you work there as well, but as a member of the corps, how did you see all of our Salvationists and friends come together in that time following the fire?

Verna Thomas-Winsor  

Well, actually, even in Lac La Bish, when news got out that, you know, our house was destroyed and stuff, I got a call on Wednesday from Major Elaine Bridger, and she was like, “So what do you need?” I'm like, “Oh, I don't need anything.” She's like, “Yeah, you do. You just lost your house and you lost—.” I was like, “Oh, I'm fine. I'm fine.” Because I've never been on the receiving end like that. Usually it's somebody else that, you know, needs help, and we were always there to help them wherever we could. And she's like, “No, no.” She said, “I know you're probably still in shock.” So then on Friday morning, the morning Quentin had passed, Major Elaine Bridger and Major Lauren Effer—they came out to visit us and bring us, you know, some things that they knew we would need. So, it was so nice to see, you know, people caring and stuff. But like I said, it was just angels everywhere. And then when I got back to town, here at our church, our church was actually set up as a place that, if you needed help, you could come here. And so, when I got back, I was used to being so busy. I was caring for my husband, I was doing all this stuff. So, when I got back, I'm like, Oh my goodness. To keep my sanity, I got to stay busy. So of course, I was back a day or two, got, you know, what I needed fixed up, like, to have somewhere to live and stuff. And then I'm like, “OK, I'm coming over. I want to volunteer. I want to help do what I can.” So, I'm there, and everybody around me is like, “All right, you go pick up what you need.” I'm like, “No, no, I'm fine. I'm fine.” And like, the ladies were here saying, “No, you need sheets, you need this. You need towels, you need—.” I was like, “Yeah, I probably do.” [laughs] Like, I wasn't thinking about me. I was thinking about wanting to help out, because that was what we did, right? My husband was a volunteer firefighter for years. So that's what we did. We helped out where we could, but then everybody wanted to help me, which—it was wonderful, but at the same time it was like not wanting all attention kind of thing.

Kristin Ostensen

Yeah, I think, in The Salvation Army, we are much more used to being on the serving end of things.

Verna Thomas-Winsor

Right.

Kristin Ostensen

Despite so much loss, there were many “God moments” during the fire and its aftermath—moments of profound connection and meaningful ministry; moments of hope.

Steve Hibbs  

One of the things that really stick out—and we've used it in sermons since then—is that we were set up at a fire station here in town, and it was sort of the incident command centre for the local EDS team, right? So, we were set up in there. And they had this poster when you came through their door: If you want a smile, go this way, and that's where the Salvation Army was set up, right? If you want some direction, go this way—it's where the local EDS was set up. If you want a hug, go this way. And again, that's where The Salvation Army was set up. So, to me, that was—we're in the right place at the right time, doing the right stuff. So that was moments with that. There were also moments that I recall with some of our EDS team, as in people who have volunteered to come in, where I see them sitting and holding hands with first responders and just praying with them, chair to chair, you know—just holding hands and praying with them. Other God moments is when you would see volunteers standing with families, when they would stand in front of their non-existing home anymore, and you would see them put their hand on their shoulder or hug them, you know. So, all of that was God moments for us.

Kristin Ostensen

Can you tell me what it was like for the church once everyone was able to come together again a few months later?

Steve Hibbs

I think one of our seniors said it best at that time. When we came together as a church congregation, she said, “Do you mind if we just sit here and not sing and not speak?” Sorry. [pauses] I think that was what we all needed, just to sit and just breathe, be grateful, be thankful that we're here, that we can do this again. And so, it was a very quiet, obviously emotional, but a very sincere, quiet spot to be.

Marina Jennings

I had the privilege on a Sunday morning after—when we went to do relief—to lead a worship time. And it was, you know, there were paramedics and firefighters and city officials who were there and had been there for the duration of this evacuation, some of them very, very tired and very exhausted, and to just be able to spend those moments in worship and to hear them say, “That was really helpful, that was really encouraging, I really needed that,” was also a moment for me when I realized that this is the privilege of ministry in the midst of chaos, right? 

Kristin Ostensen

That's really beautiful. Do you have anything that stands out for you, Major Bond?

Bond Jennings

You don't realize how God is there sometimes until an event happens and is over. But you know, you realize afterwards, yeah, you know God. God was there. He helped us get through this. He helped us keep calm in the midst of what was happening. I don't consider myself a brave person. I know I'm no hero, but I'll do these events response stuff and support our first responders in any way I can, because I know these guys are out there doing what they can to protect and serve and help out, fight off whatever is happening, whether it's a fire or something else. And so, if I can do my part, be there, serving coffee, sandwiches, soup, I'll do that. And afterwards, you think, OK, yeah, God was there. God was there, giving us strength to do what we needed to do—standing on your feet for 12 hours and being available. You realize, OK, God gave me the strength to do that, to go back at it again a few hours later, to get aboard a vehicle when you've had, you know, one or two hours of sleep, broken sleep, and to drive and, you know, God gives you the strength to do that, you know.

Ian Scott

It's part of our mission, it's part of our calling, to just go and do whatever needs to be done. You know, we serve the whosoever for whatever reason it is. So, really being able to engage with people and knowing that they're in a space where, you know, they don't know if they've lost their home, they don't know what they're coming back to, they don't know about their jobs or their circumstances—and you're there to, you know, simply carry a flat of water to their car for them, or you're there just to ask them how they're doing today. It's really noticing that time of being able to come alongside someone, just for that moment, and know that someone that has no connection to them whatsoever, cares about them and has seen them and has noticed them, and has, you know, taken the time to smile at them, to learn their name. So that was a big thing. The community coming together. I think everyone likes to think every community comes together, but until something like this happens, you know, who's really going to come together? But everybody stepped up, you know, so even the businesses and the people that weren't directly affected by the fire were able to come together and support those that were and so just seeing that connection of community. And I think that's one of the things that that Major Steve had talked about, was really seeing the community drawn that much tighter because of the shared experience. You know, not everyone is affected the same way, but everyone is affected in some way. And so, allowing them to have that common ground to talk about, and I'm sure it developed relationships and it developed connections that didn't exist before.

Kristin Ostensen

Healing after an event like this is difficult. It takes time. It’s found in community, coming together to support one another. And it flows from God’s grace, trusting in Jesus who is our ultimate healer.

Marina Jennings  

I know within our ministry unit, we had to, for our staff, we spent a full year bringing in, actually, Bob and Penny Armstrong came and spent time counselling and offering moments and tools for us to heal. I think talking with people who have experienced the same thing was very helpful to us, but also listening and hearing, I think, the stories of the people that we saw day after day at our distribution centre for, you know, a month after, realizing you weren't in it alone, that we all had very similar feelings. I will be honest and say that for Bond and I, after we had about a year later, we actually, we had to take time, and we went away for three days again with Oasis Ministries, just to deal with our own emotions. Because I think that, honestly, as a Salvation Army officer—and Bond has said this often—the hardest part for us, mentally and emotionally, was that as officers, we're used to going to disasters. In this case, we were an evacuee and we were going away, and you were so torn about, well, I should be going to this disaster and helping, but I'm an evacuee, and I have to leave, and I'm fleeing with everybody else. And so, I think the mental strain after was really tough. And I think, obviously, reflecting on what happened and knowing that God saw you through that also helped with the healing. I personally found a lot of comfort in just talking things out with our staff. And as the chaplain, I heard a lot of—because grief in loss is not only—we often think of grief only as death, but grief that so many of our people experienced, the loss of their homes and things that they would never, ever recover. They also went through every stage of grief. You know, there was anger, there was sadness, there was all kinds of things. And so, the healing process, it just didn't happen, as I said earlier, once you went back. The healing process for many, truthfully, I would say, is still ongoing. And even for ourselves, like, you know, you still have those triggers, right? If I hear a helicopter going over sometimes and it's flying low, I'm like, What is that? Like, you stand at attention almost, wondering what's going on around you. Or you hear a siren or emergency alerts, just absolutely cause me to instantly respond. And so the healing, I think, is always—when you've walked through trauma and disaster, it's ongoing, but I think for me, it was communicating how I felt, having the help, the professional help, and acknowledging that that was necessary, was a huge part of our healing, and being able to find comfort in each other, and obviously knowing the Lord's grace was sufficient through it all, and that he did protect us, and that he's the ultimate healer.

Kristin Ostensen

Looking back, Verna is grateful for how God brought the right people into her life at the right time, providing the support she didn’t even need she needed.

And in the days that followed and weeks and months, what would you say was your sort of healing process through this? Obviously, there was a lot for you to deal with—such an understatement for me to say that. But I'm wondering if you can tell us a little bit about your healing journey, and what do you think is the key to healing after an event like this?

Verna Thomas-Winsor  

Well, for me, like I said, I came back, and it was my spending time with family and friends, but I needed to stay busy. I needed to have something to focus on. And naturally, with grief, you go through different stages, and there was definitely a stage—well, for us, Christmas was always such a big deal because we loved, you know, the time with family and all that. So, I was angry, I guess, that fall, because my Christmas wasn't going to look like it always did. So, then the Christmas kettle co-ordinator position came open at church, and I'm like, I'm going to apply for that, because I need something to keep me busy. And again, you just don't realize the people you come in contact with, and God put this man in my path that that year. He was going through, he was a older gentleman, but he was going through the same kind of cancer my husband had passed away from. And I had told him how I'd lost my husband and the same kind of cancer, we found out. So then, he was such an encouragement to me, and he didn't realize it, but he always kept telling me, like, “You're such an encouragement. I love talking to you. It helps me when I talk to you.” And I'm thinking to myself, you don't realize how much you're helping me. And like I said, God put all these people in my path. And then in 2000—and so this is 2016—2017, a good friend of mine was in the position that I'm in here now at church, Donna, and she was saying, “Are you going to go back to work?” And I'm like, “If I find the perfect job, I'll go back to work,” because I worked at a bank in town, and I loved it, but like I said, it was just too much with Quentin being sick and stuff. So, I left work and stayed home and focused on him. And so, Donna was telling me about this job. And at that time, naturally, being roughly, just a little over a year since Quinton's passing, you don't realize, you know—like, you're feeling fine, and then all of a sudden something will show up or whatever, and then you're a bucket of tears or whatever. And the corps officer here was saying, “If anytime you ever got to get away from your desk, if you got to do anything, just come on in here and I'll get out,” you know. So, they were always so supportive, and such healing being here in this position, because, like I said, I've been able to talk to people who've gone through rough times themselves, and they've shared with me. So, I always say, the perfect job. It was just such a good feeling, being around positive people, and my corps officers have been amazing. 

Kristin Ostensen

Yeah. And now about 10 years after, what would you say is the lasting legacy of the fire in Fort McMurray?

Verna Thomas-Winsor  

Well, it just shows you how resilient we are, and how even in the midst of such a rough time, God is good and he'll always provide. Because, again, like I said, it hasn't always been easy the last 10 years, but God has always put people in my path to help. And I was 49 when my husband passed. We were young sweethearts. But he passed in 2016. In 2019, a young gentleman started coming to our corps. [laughs] And, yeah, we became friends really fast. And I tell people, 2020 made some people do a lot of crazy things. [laughs] So, 2020, we got married. God provided another wonderful man, and I’m so thankful that he really does look out to us and, yeah, he knows just what you need when you don't realize yourself.

Kristin Ostensen

Major Steve is now retired, but he lives in Fort McMurray where he is still active in the corps and the community.

Kristin Ostensen

I'm wondering, what do you think is the lasting legacy of The Beast, 10 years later?

Steve Hibbs

CBC interviewed me shortly after the fire, and they said, if you were to describe the people in Fort McMurray right now, what would you say it is? I said, “Oh, boy, they have a stickability nature. They're sticking with each other. They're sticking with the process that we're going to build beauty out of these ashes.” And to see that passion and that compassion, I'm saying The Beast didn't win. We're coming back. We're going to build better, we're going to build greater, and we're going to be a better neighbour, and we're going to be a better friend, and we're going to do things with family that we've not done before. We're not just going to be here to make a living. We're going to be here to make a life. And we have seen the legacy of that Beast come forward to create a community that is so beautiful and so family-oriented and so generous in their giving and their support that pre-fire would not have been there. Post-fire is absolutely a community that's got wings. You know, it's absolutely beautiful to see. So, the legacy, I think is, I think it opened our eyes and our hearts to what real living is all about. Take nothing for granted, appreciate each day and be grateful and thankful.

Kristin Ostensen

Amen.

Thanks for joining us for another episode of the Salvationist podcast. For more episodes, visit Salvationist.ca/podcast.