SLAVE LAKE — Exploding ammunition and exploding tempers made for a tense day Wednesday in northern Alberta, where a devastating wildfire on the weekend destroyed about a third of the town of Slave Lake.
Reporters and photographers on a tour of the scene were unexpectedly rushed from the area when fire officials discovered a box of ammunition in one home started going off as an after-effect of the fire.
“Get back, get back, get back!” a panicked-sounding official yelled as he tried to corral the media representatives back to the safety of their cars.
“That’s the reason why we don’t want people in the location here,” RCMP Sgt. Tim Tamiguchi said later, suggesting it’s an illustration of why it’s not yet safe for residents to return.
Meanwhile, Slave Lake Mayor Karina Pillay-Kinnee was in a closed-door meeting in nearby Athabasca with some of the town’s 7,000 evacuees, trying to explain just that.
Many of the residents who emerged from the meeting appeared very angry, saying they were upset at a lack of information from both the local and provincial governments.
A lot of them say they don’t know yet whether their houses are still standing or not, and they’re being told it could be weeks before they will be allowed to return.
Pillay-Kinee said she wanted to meet with the evacuees in person and reassure them that officials are doing the best they can.
“When we do give the information, they’re going to know if their homes have been affected, damaged or destroyed,” she said.
“We’re doing everything we can and I think in the next while we will have that information to them.
“That was a very emotional, difficult task for us, to speak with our residents but I think the message is we’re working hard on the ground, to get our community up and running, so we can have them back in our community, and start rebuilding our community.”
As of yet, the town has no potable water, no electricity and no natural gas.
The one thing it does have again is its radio station, which went back on the air Wednesday after a hasty shutdown in the face of the fire.
“We’re such a strong community,” said Courtney Murphy, news director and morning show host for 92.7-FM, The Lake.
Staff at the radio station are still working from the offices of their sister station in Edson, Alta. But technicians discovered the Slave Lake station’s transmission tower was relatively undamaged by the fire, so broadcasts began again Tuesday — an audible signal from a town knocked to its knees.
“We just continued as usual, doing all our updates,” said Murphy.
The station went off the air Sunday after losing power. Murphy had been covering the blaze since the day before, at one point doing live phone-ins from a government plane circling the fire scene.
“When I got out of the plane, our radio station was starting to cut on and off the air,” she said.
“We were inside the station, and the power was completely cut to the building and everything went black. (The government) contacted me when we were in the studio and said, ’You know, you need to get to a non-combustible area as soon as possible.’ ”
The Lake’s transmission tower is out of town, but station staff were convinced it had been burned because it was beside a fire lookout tower that had itself been abandoned in the face of encroaching flames.
Staff beat a tactical retreat to Edson from where they continued to broadcast online and kept the Facebook page updated.
There are other encouraging signs. One of the town’s major employers is considering its restart options. And the provincial government has announced an initial $50 million to help get residents back on their feet.
West Fraser Timber, which owns two plants in town that employ up to 300 people, is starting to think about how it will resume operations.
“There’s going to be major logistical issues,” said senior vice-president Larry Hughes.
Employees who want to get back to work but lost their homes may be housed in facilities erected for firefighters, he said.
“We’re already exploring alternatives such as temporary camps. We may arrange for transportation from some of the areas they’ve been evacuated to.”
The provincial money will initially focus on housing, income support and other needs of evacuees.
“This funding is an important first step on the road to rebuilding the community,” Premier Ed Stelmach said Wednesday in a release.
— By Bob Weber in Edmonton