‘We’d never had that kind of level of emergency’

“Hey. Family, friends. I’m safe. I’m here. All is good. I don’t have an update for you but this is Fort Smith right now at 9:05am on… jeez, is today Sunday?”

So began one of Dana Fergusson’s first videos after Fort Smith’s 3,000 or so residents were told to evacuate on August 12, 2023.

Fergusson, a town councillor and owner of the town’s Pelican Rapids Inn, stayed behind and became an information lifeline. Her short video updates, dressed in a hi-viz jacket and wandering the near-deserted town, were part of the daily routine for evacuees spread across Alberta and beyond.

The evacuation ultimately lasted 37 days. Most of the town was spared, though some outlying areas received significant wildfire damage.

Residents returned to a completely changed landscape, where impenetrable thickets of boreal forest had given way to vast vistas through the bare remains of burned trees.

One year to the day after that evacuation order, Fergusson joined Cabin Radio to reflect on the fires, the evacuation and everything that followed.

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“When the last plane left Smith, I was with Emily Colucci, our acting senior administrator. She and I were at the airport helping to make the manifest, pack luggage and get planes and people boarded,” Fergusson recalled.

“As that last plane left – they said no more can come, because of the way the fire was coming at us – we had a moment where she and I looked at each other. Maybe we were supposed to be on that plane, right? Because if there’s no more to come… that was kind-of a weird, weird moment for us.”

Fergusson described the moment she decided to start providing video updates – a call from her daughter.

“Hey, mom, I heard the college burnt down,” she recalls her daughter saying, before listing a catalogue of other buildings rumoured to have burned.

“And I’m like, no, whoa, whoa. Back up. None of that’s like that. I’m standing right here in the middle of town, and nothing’s like that,” Fergusson recalled. She asked colleagues still on the ground in Fort Smith: “Should I make a post? Because if my daughter is thinking that, I’m sure a lot of people are thinking that.”

The changed landscape still has an effect on residents, she said.

“Every time I turn down the Petro road to go either left or right out of town, I’m always shocked at: ‘Whoa, there goes the trees.’ I’m always shocked at the landscape. And then if I’m heading out of town, I’m always just awed at the Salt Mountain, about how it looks like it’s forever changed.

“God, there was a forest here. I’m sure there was a forest here. Now it just looks barren in rock and foreverness, right? If every time I drive down the street, I’m reminded of that, I’m sure everyone’s having the same kind of effect.”

Her message to Fort Smith now, a year later?

“Just keep being you. Keep being strong, guys. Take a breath. It’s not going to be like this forever, and you’re doing your best job, doing whatever it is, healing and making things right.

“If you’re not quite there and you’re still really struggling with whatever your experience was, seek out help and make sure that you’re asking for help. The Town of Fort Smith has amazing people in it, and I’m pretty, pretty happy to call it my home.”