Before and After the Fire

 May 15 2011

If you didn't live there before the fire, you don't know.

You don't know what it was like that day, watching the sky, talking to your neighbours, scanning social media and internet news.

You don't know what it was like to listen. Listen so hard for a voice that told you to go. 

A voice that never came.

You don't know how the news the fire had breached the highway shot through town like an electric current.

You don't know the weird mix of fear and calm as you fled.

You don't know the anxiousness of waiting. 

Waiting to find out if anyone had died. Because surely someone had.

Waiting to find out if your house was still standing. 

Waiting to hear who among your friends was homeless.

You may have heard the stories, but you don't fully understand how people helped save each other.  

And you can't know the stillness in your car when you drove back into your town. When you had no words to describe what you were seeing.

You can't know the devastation that no picture can show, as much a feeling as an image. You can't know that particular sadness.

But you might know. You should know how people came together to try to rebuild something. Something better.

Before the fire. 

After the fire.

A day that defined Slave Lake.

In front of our house. Photo Credit: Len Ramsey

Fire breaches the highway. Photo credit: Bruce Turnbull

Making our escape

Watching the fire burn through town.

Photo credit: Len Ramsey