By last Monday afternoon, my friend’s biggest concern was his pants.
Specifically, they were too short for his six-foot-three frame, barely covering his ankles. Had it been a flood he was fleeing, rather than a fire, he would’ve been fine.
Instead, he was in Leduc, Alta., displaced – along with his wife and two dogs – about 500-km south of their home in Fort McMurray.
My friend had been forced to wear the ill-fitting sweatpants because he hadn’t yet had time to shop, and the only other clothes he had were shorts and tank tops, as they’d just returned to Alberta from a vacation in sunnier climes.
The wildfire ravaged their city while they were gone.
And though his outfit wasn’t exactly his best look, both he and his wife considered themselves lucky that they did not have larger problems.
Unlike so many in Fort McMurray, they did not lose their home, though it was days before they knew for sure.
They had spent much of their vacation a few days earlier sitting poolside, trying, through spotty Mexican-resort Wi-Fi, to connect with friends and family, while frantically hitting ‘refresh’ on Facebook and Twitter updates.
I did the same, reading news article after news article and tweet after tweet late into the night.
And, as expected when a disaster of this magnitude happens, misinformation ran rampant. Over the course of an afternoon, my friends were told that their entire street – on the west edge of town – had burned to the ground; then, that it was untouched; then, that only one house had been lost, but it was an even-numbered address, as opposed to their odd-numbered home.
Then, finally, real proof. An up-to-date Google satellite image was released late last week and posted across a number of news websites.
They could see their roof.
In the end, a number of homes in my friends’ neighbourhood were lost – entire subdivisions slightly west of them, in fact. The townhouses immediately behind their house – if you stood on their backyard property line, you could almost touch one – were gone, too.
A few hours later, a friend of a friend of a firefighter – one of the few people left in town – took photos of my friends’ house, and they were passed along to them.
In one photo, their detached garage is gone, the fire having gutted it.
But their house – just feet from the garage – was still standing. Likely damaged from both smoke and heat, but standing nonetheless.
In another photo, it is clear that a powerful stream of water had flowed down the driveway to the curb. Firefighters, one suspects, had made it there as the garage burned and were able to fight back the flames and save their home, as well as their neighbours’.
And though their losses total in the thousands – nothing insurance shouldn’t cover – my two friends have repeatedly said how extraordinarily lucky they feel, both because the biggest wildfire in Alberta history stopped less than six feet from their back door, and because of the support they received from friends, family and strangers along the way.
It must be an incredibly helpless feeling, watching your city burn from afar.
While it will be some time before they’ll be able to return home and assess the damage for themselves, my friends are starting to settle into their new reality. They’ve moved to the southern part of the province for the next few weeks at least, and have started making back-to-work plans.
My lanky friend even had time this week to pick up a few new pairs of jeans, though truth be told, his flood-pants never seemed to bother him much.
“Could be worse,” he said, after I’d sent him a text message poking fun at his evacuee-chic wardrobe. “Besides, I’ve got pants at home.”
Nick Greenizan is a reporter at the Peace Arch News.