(Photo Credit: Facebook/Paddle Prairie Metis Settlement)

By Sheena Roszell

Wildfires

Paddle Prairie evacuees fearful of what they’ll return home to

May 30, 2019 | 12:47 PM

The Vice Chair of the Paddle Prairie Metis Settlement says homes in her community are burning and she feels like they’re the forgotten people once again.

Lori Wanuch says she has been keeping in close contact with someone from Alberta Emergency Management who has told her homes on the north end have already burned.

“He figures all of our homes on the north side are burnt. He has to go around and check physically before he can confirm.”

They have about 230 homes on the settlement.

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“The north homes are all along Highway 35, probably about eight houses and then we have three houses on the Tompkins Road which is where the fire went as well and jumped the river.”

Wanuch says they evacuated to Grande Prairie about one week ago for what was a smoke advisory at the time. The fire then was 21 kilometres away and she says she never expected things to get this bad.

“People left their pets. People left their pictures. People left their documents. People left every single thing because we were not under a threat for fire, it was just the smoke.”

She says they were told many times the fire was 21 kilometres away and they didn’t have to worry.

She said they had to constantly push the High Level fire department for information.

“Next thing you know it’s 2 kilometres away from our settlement,” she said.

“Our members were saying ‘it’s closer to the settlement than you think it is, they’re not telling you the truth.’”

She says there are about 40 dogs still there that are being fed by volunteers and firefighters and gates had to be opened for horses to run away.

“The fire is all around us. We still don’t know how far the fire went into parts of the settlement, because we hold like 28 townships and we have homes all over our settlement, and there is a lot of bush, so it is a very, very scary situation.”