‘My legs were getting smashed in. My face was burning’ – This is climate breakdown

2 days ago 5

Location Fort Smith, Canada
Disaster Wood Buffalo Complex fire, 2023

Olivia is Dene, a member of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, and works in environmental management. In 2023, she was caught up in the massive evacuation when the Wood Buffalo Complex fire broke out, burning more than 500,000 hectares in and around the national park. Across Canada, the 2023 wildfire season was unprecedented in its scale and intensity. Eight firefighters were killed, and about 200,000 people were displaced.

We were on evacuation alert. I remember my heart racing because I was like: “This is it. This is happening.” I finished my work day, went home, and I was unsure of what to do, wondering if I could stay and help.

Woman standing in snowy landscape with burnt trees

There was going to be a severe wind event the next day. They gave us an eight-hour window to evacuate, because the fire was on the highway. There is one highway into Fort Smith, and you had to drive through the fire to leave. They focused all the fire crews to keep the highway open so people could leave before the fire got too close to town. To avoid traffic, and since we have long hours of light, I was like: “I’ll be fine if I just leave later.”

I showered. I ate supper. I sat down and hung out with my boyfriend. I played some video games, and we went for a cruise around town and took pictures. I took videos of the town, because I was like: “OK, here’s my high school I went to.” One of my best friends is painting a mural in the high school right now. I took a picture of her mural. We’re the only town in the Northwest Territories with a water tower and I took a picture of that. We’re the only place that has a cathedral. Just general, everyday things, where I was like “Hey, I don’t think there’s pictures of these things. I want to document this.”

Then I went home, packed up my vehicle, and every year on the anniversary of buying my house, I take a selfie with my house. I asked my boyfriend to come outside, and I was like: “Hey, come outside with me. Let’s take a picture of the house. This might be the last selfie.”

I posted to TikTok something along the lines of “when you believe your house is going to burn, you take a final selfie with it.” It was just a little clip. That ended up being my first video to go viral.

I’m not big on social media. I like posting for me and for my close friends. Being public makes me anxious. I was really afraid, having that up there. I was torn because Meta had just introduced their policy where no news media was supposed to be online. No one knew what was happening. I felt like, if I took down my videos because of my own fear of being seen, it would be selfish. I kept them up.

I was the highest viewed video for what was going on in the Northwest Territories for a while, specifically, Fort Smith. I took it down when news sources started picking up what was happening. It wasn’t until Yellowknife got evacuated a week later.

I packed up my vehicle, got my dogs in, and I was getting ready to leave. As a wildland firefighter, my boyfriend stayed and I took off. I hadn’t seen any of the burn areas yet. As I drove through, it looked like normal burn. If you’re not used to seeing forest fire burn areas, what that means is there’s standing trees and burnt grass, and the trees might be a little bit darker. It was not normal later.

I took a video of this massive helicopter carrying a water bucket. Nonstop helicopters overhead. All that post said was: “Fort Smith, Northwest Territories is evacuated due to wildfires.” I took a picture of me and my dogs. I know it’s morbid to be like, “I want to record what’s happening,” but when you go through mass emotions and trauma, you start to freak out. I wanted to record things so later on I could remember. I was taking pictures and videos along the way.

I didn’t listen to any music. I didn’t listen to any radio, nothing. I drove in silence for the three hours all the way to Hay River. I got to Hay River at 11 o’clock at night, and my friends had already arrived there. They made me pizza, and we had a beer. We’re sitting there, just talking about it, but the big question was like: “What’s next?” I went to bed, and I did not sleep. I was wired the whole night.

About the series

This is climate breakdown was put together in collaboration with the Climate Disaster Project at University of Victoria, Canada, and the International Red Cross. Read more.

Production team

It was supposed to be 80km winds the next day blowing the fire towards town. The gossip was that it was going to hit town. There was no stopping it. The grief process already began, like this is it. Everything’s going to be gone. The next morning, I woke up and heard the people staying with me talking about what to do. That’s when they’re like: “We’re going to leave.” I took off before my friends, because I was by myself, and I told them: “I’m going to get tired at some point, so I want to get as far as I can.”

There’s two popular gas stations. I went by both of those, and there were lineups to get gas. Then I went into the industrial area, which is not paved. I pulled up to a cardlock (gas station) that accepts credit cards, and it’s a place that I’ve been to multiple times. I got out of the vehicle.

That’s when it hit me: the windstorm is here. I could not keep my vehicle doors open. My legs were getting smashed in, and bruised from the doors repeatedly being blown closed on me. My face was burning, because the wind was so strong, it was whipping me in the face with sand.

I have very long hair, and my hair was up and spinning in every which way. By the end of filling up my vehicle and getting in, I had a beehive. My hair was full of dirt. I couldn’t run my fingers through it. It was just straight knots.

I drove south. You lose cell service after a while. You’re in dead zones for hours on time. It was windy, but things were fine. You can see this giant smoke plume coming from a fire from the west. The wind is blowing that fire towards us. I stopped at the 60th parallel, which is the border into the Northwest Territories from Alberta. They have a little park there.

The person that takes care of that park was stressed out. I could see them pacing and walking around everywhere. I was just standing there with my dogs on a leash, watching. He kept pointing at this big smoke bloom, which looked far in the distance. Then I realized there’s closer little ones not very far away. I saw those, and I was like, those are here. Those are right here.

The rest of the drive to Innisfail is blurry. I just remember driving and sobbing and crying. Seeing the photos and videos of what people were going through was terrifying. That fire burnt the highway people were evacuating on. I just missed it. People were in car accidents. People lost their livestock. People were driving through flames.

There was one video some teenagers had posted and they were screaming and yelling, because they were by themselves without an adult in the vehicle. I was so thankful my grandmother and her kids were not evacuating through that, but I was really, really afraid for all my extended family. I was really afraid of the death toll that was going to come out of that.

When we first got to Alberta, we went so far south that there was no evacuation centre and we were on our own. Soon after, word of Yellowknife being evacuated was up in the air. Eventually, because so many people were evacuating, a centre opened up in northern Edmonton, which is where my parents were.

I didn’t elect to take all the help that was there. I feel like I got what I needed. I think the major flaw that happened in places that received us was the lack of awareness. I get they would not know about my town but it’s like, if someone had a dying parent or lost a parent, you’d be very kind about it. I found a lot of people did not realize that is essentially what everyone was going through: grief. It’s hard to have patience for each other when you don’t realize that is actually what’s occurring.

A rescue helicopter flying over a mountainside forest fire

We ended up all separating to not outstay our stay. I went to Sundre and stayed with my friend’s family. This friend is also Indigenous. She took me on this hike that she loves, which was a turning point for me being able to release and relax. She’s like: “It’ll feel like healing because we’re going to go to a waterfall.” I told her: “That’s what I want right now. I just want to be by water. I’m so tired of fire.” I got what I asked for, because it poured rain our whole drive up there. Absolutely poured the whole time for our hike. My friend was like: “I’m so sorry. Usually, this is nicer.” I was like: “No.” I needed to see rain because I don’t think I saw rain all summer.

I was pretty sure that we would not be permitted to go home until Hay River opened up, because there would be no groceries or anything because there’s no fuel along the way. They opened up Hay River, and then they started talking about us. Then a week later we got to go home. This is where things got really emotional.

South of Enterprise is a series of waterfalls that have nice boardwalks. You could see that they’re burnt. That little community was full of vegetation and lush. Driving through Enterprise, it looked like a dystopian film. Everything was grey or black. You could see so many of the homes burnt. These are people on their pensions, for the most part. Enterprise is an older population. I wept for them.

Driving home, I saw all the areas I’ve ever camped and hunted at with my family are gone. The way the fire burned, it surrounded Fort Smith. I was shocked to see how much of the highway going toward my town burnt. The pavement itself was fine.

The eerie thing about the drive was the wooden telephone poles. There were just wires hanging. Some you could see little licks of fire touch the bottom. You’d come across ones where it’s so burnt it looks like a beaver chewing on it, with the transformer bits hanging there loosely. Then, sometimes you’d come across ones where it would be burnt all the way through.

I didn’t receive any damage. I had power when I came home. There was no sewage issues. There’s no water issues. The only thing is we did not have internet for a while.

There’s one major part in returning to town where I knew that if I saw it, it was going to wreck me. That area is outside of town called Salt Mountain. It’s a key spot because that’s where it burnt the hottest and it burnt the hardest. It looks like a nuclear bomb went off. It’s decimated. There’s absolutely no plants. There’s absolutely no vegetation. You would never believe there was a tree there. You’d never believe there was a plant there. It is white ash everywhere for as far as you can see.

I won’t be able to bring my children there one day and explain certain details of a place because it’ll be brand new by the time they get there. When I eventually have a family, I won’t be able to show them the boreal forest as a mature forest. It will be young and it’d be in a totally different stage than what I got to experience. I’m hoping we’ll see a lot healthier forests around here now. Old growth isn’t always a healthy forest. I always knew that was a threat.

Hunting was really hard for people this year. You had to go so much further, and even if you went on boats, you’re going into areas that are still burning. We can still see it. It’s still smouldering. You can still smell it. You can see it on the highway. It’s not gone. I always thought climate change was something that affected other people. Tuktoyaktuk, which is on the Arctic Ocean, is slowly eroding away due to warmer weather, less sea ice. I still view climate change as affecting the Arctic-Arctic, not me. Then, I’m a victim of it.

This testimonial was produced with the help of the Climate Disaster Project; thanks to Sean Holman, Aldyn Chwelos, Darren Schuettler, Ricardo Garcia, Cristine Gerk, Tracy Sherlock, Lisa Taylor.