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Fighting the Fort Mac fire When thoughts and prayers really make a difference

-by Bill Dunphy

“I love you.”

Without his own phone and no time for long conversations, those three words were all Jerron Hawley had time to text to his wife and family to let them know he was alive and well at the height of the Fort McMurray fire.

Hawley is a career firefighter/EMT with the Fort McMurray Fire Department (FMFD). At 26, he’s the youngest of seven in the Nell and Doug Hawley brood of Port Hood.

The FMFD has approximately 140 members including dispatchers, captains and firefighters. When “The Beast”, as the wildfire became known, turned on Fort McMurray on Tuesday, May 3rd there were about 100 city firefighters on hand, including Hawley.

“It started on Sunday, and on Monday we were putting out hotspots. On Tuesday, I went for a drive with my friend, Luke MacLennan (of Whycocomagh). We saw three plumes of smoke, the wind had picked up, and the fire was evolving. I told Luke, ‘Take me to the hall.’”

Until then, some mandatory evacuation orders, in Gregoire and Prairie Creek, had been lifted. But by 6:25 p.m. on Tuesday, all of Fort McMurray was under a mandatory evacuation order.

“I was at the hall at noon, though my shift didn’t start until 4 p.m. Then the call went out, ‘Any member, any apparatus (fire truck) respond to Hall 1.’ That’s when we knew this was going to be bad,” said Hawley.

From then on, much of what Hawley and his brigade brothers and sisters experienced became lost in the haze of nonstop firefighting. Day and night were indistinguishable due to the heavy smoke and the hours passed by. “It was night time 24/7 because of the smoke.”

Hawley and crew, Pump 316, were dispatched to Beacon Hill to assist with the evacuation.

“You could see the fire coming and we’re telling people to get out. We came on two women going back, concerned about their dogs. We convinced them to leave and went back, breached the door, and got the dogs out.

“At that point we knew our main priority was to get everyone out safely. We were determined not to lose any lives.”

Hawley said much of what they did was defensive, in that if a house was burning out of control, they would concentrate their firefighting efforts on the next house, and then the next house, and so on.

“It was scary. At one point, three of those long cylindrical propane tanks at a gas station exploded simultaneously. That one scary moment lasted only until we knew what we had to do.”

Thirty hours later, Hawley, his crew, and the two saved dogs made it back to the hall. Pulling up to the hall, there were four horses, about 100 dogs and 50 cats in the truck bay.

“We’d get brief moments of rest; your mind and body connect and the adrenaline runs your body. I owe it to the people of Port Hood, of Inverness County, of Cape Breton for getting me through it. My mom was able to tell me they held a church service for me and the Fort McMurray Fire Department. These people came together when we were almost at our breaking points,” said Hawley.

“It was so amazing, and my fellow firefighters were seeing the same thing – stories from everywhere about how our communities were supporting us.

“Who are the heroes? It’s all these people who took time out of their day to say a prayer, to spare a thought for us. For us, this is our job; but for all these people who don’t have to do that, they’re the heroes in my mind.”

The fight continued for 16 days for those members of the FMFD. Hawley spent the first two days at MacDonald Island, then they used his house (which was undamaged) as a base for a couple of other nights. “Neighbours gave us their garage codes so that we could use their homes and get something to eat.”

“For the first four or five days, until we got a handle on it, we were putting in 22-hour days. After that we were managing four or five hours of sleep. I didn’t know what my body could do until that point.

“We used every resource we could find. We had eight to 10 pumpers, training trucks, two aerials. We took the medical stuff out of an ambulance and filled it with fruit and water. Until then, we were drinking out of our fire hoses...time was of the essence.”

While at no time did the fire crews find themselves in trouble, Hawley said there were a couple of times when embers from the fires would get behind them to start spot fires. “We might have stayed in some areas too long, but we were trying to stay until the last second. The houses we did lose, we fought until we couldn’t fight any longer. You have to respect that fire, it’s called The Beast for a reason, and in a fight like that there’s no winner.”

Hawley lost 35 lbs. in 14 days, drinking 30 bottles of water a day, though he doesn’t recommend it as a diet plan.

He and his wife Carlene (a Neil’s Harbour native) were able to come home for a few days last week before heading back on Monday.

His father, and brothers Darcy and Loren, all work in Fort McMurray.

Hawley said his perspective on life has changed on account of the fire.

“I’m definitely a changed person – for the positive,” he said. “My vocabulary has changed from ‘I’ and ‘me’ to ‘us’ and ‘we’.”

“Fort Mac used to get a bad rap for a lot of reasons. But people will never understand how 90,000 people evacuated a city with only one way in and one way out.

“Everybody came together. The people discovered they’re just a whole bunch of people who came from small towns and made one big town, and that’s how everyone got out safely.”

He said that sense of community has been with him since he was a little boy and was diagnosed with Legge-Perthes disease, which required frequent trips to the Shriners Hospital in Montreal.

“It wasn’t just me fighting that fire, it was everything and everybody up to that, from the support I received going to Montreal to the support I received now.

“I was there physically, but I know everybody here was by my side, fighting with me. Dad was the last one out on Friday morning. Most people would have felt alone at that point, but I didn’t feel alone at all.

“And I’m so proud to be a member of my family of firefighters, that sisterhood and brotherhood. It was as if we were all in a line and if one fell, there were 139 there to pick you up, and if two fell, there were 138.”

Hawley said all his feelings of community were reinforced upon coming home.

“They say there’s seven degrees of separation? I think it’s two degrees. I spoke to Lance and Ardell’s classes (two of his brothers who teach in the Strait Regional School Board) and in Lance’s class we asked how many didn’t have a relative or someone they knew working in Fort McMurray and only two raised their hands.

“When I first came home, I went to my niece’s first communion, and it was just a normal day. Coming back to town, people want to know how you’re doing, or simply say that it’s good to see you. That’s my therapy.”

Hawley also said amidst all the panic and worry, he learned Carlene was pregnant, giving him and his family some much-needed joy in such a terrible time.

By now Hawley is back on his regular shift at the FMFD. And when he’s not working there, he said he’ll be a carpenter, or an electrician, or anything else he has to be to see his community rebuilt.

“There were 20 people I work with who lost their homes. Some will be staying with me and Carlene, for as long as they have to, and that was Carlene’s idea to pass that invitation on to them.”

  

 

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