As flames threaten Fort McMurray, former Darlingford resident faced with wildfire once again

Wildfire season has begun in a large and destructive way, with major out of control blazes threatening communities in B.C., Alberta and Manitoba. Fort McMurray, Alberta is once again facing the possibility of flames breaching city limits, and thousands of people have already been evacuated, keeping in mind it was just eight years ago when wildfires destroyed large sections of the city.

Connor Holenski grew up in Darlingford, but has lived in the northern Alberta city for more than eleven years, and experienced the 2016 fire firsthand, being evacuated, as well as the massive Athabasca River flooding the region experienced in April 2020.

Connor Holenski and family

He departed last Friday for a conference in Vancouver, and it was during take-off he saw, for the first time, how close the flames were, flying directly over the blaze located south of the city.

"At that point on Friday, we had no idea the fire was even there," he shared with reporter Robyn Wiebe late Thursday afternoon. "That was the first I knew there was a fire that close to town. I had a window seat, so I snapped a couple of photos at that point, just thinking, that's really interesting, I hope it doesn't get any closer to town."

But that's exactly what happened, with Holenski receiving an emergency alert on his phone as soon as he landed in Calgary for his connecting flight.

"That's when the emergency alert hit my phone that a couple of communities south of Fort McMurray had been put on evacuation notice," he explained. "I called my wife right away, and I was kind of kicking myself why did I have to leave town, now. She checked, and thank goodness, I had a full tank of gas in the car. She packed some small things, just in case we needed to go, but I wasn't too terribly concerned all weekend. Then when I got back to town, that's when things started to to ramp up a little bit."

He arrived home Tuesday morning, just hours before a mandatory evacuation order was issued for 6,600 people in the city's south end.

"As we got closer to town from the airport, the the smoke got thicker, and as we drove down Beacon Hill into the valley, you could actually see the smoke just spanning the valley, which I'm going to say is 2 to3 kilometers across," he said. "The smoke was very thick in the air, and it started to get quite impressive when you got down in there, and of course off to the west was the column of smoke."

Holenski's first impressions of the wildfire, after returning home, were only the beginning of him beginning to get eerie feelings of 2016 happening all over again, with smoke very thick in the city's downtown area where he lives.

"I had the thought I haven't done an oil change on the car, I haven't taken the winter tires off, so I thought I would drive up to the tire shop on the other end of town, which entailed crossing the Athabasca Bridge, which basically bisects the whole community," he explained. "Driving across that bridge, which runs mostly north, I could look off to the west, and on the ridge I could just see a huge column of smoke. A couple of thoughts hit me; first of all, it's really big and it's way closer than my first impression. Secondly, it had an orange glow in the bottom of it, and at that point it really struck me as being a carbon copy of what happened in 2016. That fire looks big. It looks scary, and it looks way closer than I was expecting. That's when it really started to hit home this might really be a serious thing."

Once the evacuation order was issued, Holenski noted it became clear a significant number of people outside those areas ordered to leave were also leaving the city Tuesday afternoon.

"A lot of other people, even in the downtown, had taken note of that," he said "My condo, I'm going to guess probably about 30% of the people that afternoon packed up and got out. It was a very helter skelter afternoon. I decided to stay put. There wasn't much reason for us to get out, and if we did need to get out, we knew the route would be there, but people in the condo were all packing up, throwing stuff in their vehicles. There was even a couple of staff from the condominium out in vests directing traffic." 

Holenski admits he was surprised how many people in not affected areas decided to pack up and get out, too. 

"It's understandable," he noted. "People saw that cloud, and they got spooked, and for me it was triggering as well, but yeah, a lot of people left."

To this point, his family hasn't been forced from their home, and as of late Thursday afternoon when we chatted with him, he wasn’t expecting that to happen. The Fort McMurray area is expecting rain and showers today through Sunday, alongside cooler temperatures between 6 and 10 degrees, certainly good news as firefighters attempt to contact the blaze.

Those under mandatory evacuation, the neighbourhoods of Prairie Creek, Abasand, Beacon Hill and Grayling Terrace, have been told the order will be in place until at least May 21st.

You can listen to part of the conversation between Connor Holenski and Robyn Wiebe below.

- With Files from Robyn Wiebe -