“My hat is off to those men and women firefighters who came from so far away. There were hundreds of people at the staging areas. They were there a week or two straight, fighting the fires.”
KEITH DIAKIW, P.GEO. Auxiliary Firefighter, Canadian Natural Resources
it out. “When we first saw it, our mouths dropped. The flames were about 130 feet up.” The seeming randomness of it all struck him. In Beacon Hill, where 476 homes were lost, a nearby strip mall, school, and church survived. In Abasand, a car wash burned down but the gas station beside it was untouched.
“You get off the truck and you’re silent. All these houses are burned. You just hear running water — complete silence except for water running down the street from kitchen faucets. Everything is ash. Your heart breaks when you see the devastation, where people have lost everything.” In another community, he saw a house
torn in half and vehicles flipped over. A bull- dozer had attempted to create a firebreak, and it was still there, a burned-out shell. The fire was so extreme, it had melted the rims from vehicles, turning them to puddles. The biggest blaze his crew battled was an apartment complex in Abasand. It took most of the night for several crews to put
WINTER 2016 PEG | 49
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