Crystal Conway (nee Bartholomew) has lived in Fort McMurray, Alberta since 2008, but before that she called the Arthur area home.
She went to school in Arthur and her family still lives in the area.
Crystal, along with her husband Nick and their two children, Maddison, 4, and Maxim, 2, have been displaced due to the 200,000-plus hectare wildfire that has been burning in the Fort McMurray area since May 1.
Their neighbourhood of Gregoire was one of the first to be evacuated the first night. Crystal and her family headed for the downtown area, but they were back in their home the next day.
By May 3 the fire had grown from 120 hectares to over 2,600 hectares, forcing thousands to flee the city.
After her husband left for work that morning, Crystal went about her day, taking her daughter to school then heading to the grocery store. Around 1pm she got a call from her daughter’s school asking her to pick up Maddison.
“They were all in the gym. You have to sign out your children so that everyone was accounted for, so that’s kind of when it really hit me that this is really serious,” Crystal said.
“Within an hour everyone was evacuating.”
With her husband still at work, Crystal started packing.
“I was kind of packing random things… getting stuff for the kids, their special blankets; I was thinking overnight kind of thing – nothing to this extent,” she said.
Nick, who works for the fire team with the Syncrude oil company, was originally asked to report to the fire hall there. Crystal said Syncrude allowed members whose neighbourhoods were affected to leave.
“He jumped in the car with some other people and was headed south, but with the traffic … they didn’t want to go down the highway, so they actually took an off-road trail through the bush,” she said.
Crystal finally met up with Nick at a friend’s house in Saprae Creek, a neighbourhood now reported to have “significant loss.”
She explained she felt “helpless” not being able to meet up with him sooner.
“It was really scary even when I was by myself with the kids running through the chaos of not knowing where to go or if my husband was going to be let go from work or what we were going to do.”
Leaving around 8pm, the Conways headed south on Highway 63. Crystal described seeing the flames from the road and “just clouds and clouds of thick smoke.”
“It was terrifying, it was really scary, I mean stuff you see in the movies that you don’t really think happens to you,” she said.
It took the family 10 hours to get to Edmonton – normally four-hour trip. Crystal explained her sister-in-law came to collect her children so she and Nick didn’t “have to worry about them in this craziness.”
So far, the Conways have heard their house is still standing and the fire went around their neighbourhood. But what comes next is still up in the air.
“[Looking back] all you see is smoke and flames and you don’t know what or if your going to go back to,” she said.
For now, Crystal and Nick are heading to Calgary.
‘Help Fort Mac’
Crystal was first contacted by the Advertiser after she posted her appreciation on Twitter for Arthur residents collecting donations for those affected by the wildfire.
Organizers Pamela Geiger and Kayla Evans met just half an hour before they started collecting donations.
Evans, a former Arthur resident now living in Rockwood, was looking for a way to help Fort McMurray residents when she posted a message to that effect on Facebook.
Evans said within a couple of hours, she received over 200 responses.
It started with the truck group Evans is a part of, 519Trucks, which collected donations throughout Ontario over the weekend and shipped them through Cam-Scott Trucking to Fort McMurray on May 9.
“It’s just devastating, I couldn’t imagine being in that situation,” said Evans. “I don’t know how they are doing it, so it was just anything that we could possibly do to try to make it even just a tiny bit easier.”
Geiger, manager at the Arthur Subway restaurant, was looking for a way to help when she saw the post. She offered the store parking lot as a place to drop off donations and it just went from there.
“It’s heart wrenching,” said Geiger. “We’re just going throughout life like normal, like nothing’s happened and they’re whole world has been destroyed.”
Geiger and Evans were able to gather enough donations to fill three pickup trucks and a car. Staff at Subway in Arthur donated their tips to the Red Cross throughout the weekend and raised over $525.
“The way the town has pulled together has really got me,” said Geiger
For Crystal, seeing the community’s effort has comforted her.
“We’re so far west, it’s so comforting to hear that everybody across the county and from everywhere is pitching in to help us out,” she said.
Donations are being accepted by the Red Cross, which will be matched by the federal government, as well as the Salvation Army.
Residents wishing to make a donation to the Red Cross can visit redcross.ca or text REDCROSS to 30333 to donate $5.
The Salvation Army has raised over $525,000 towards the Alberta fire response efforts. Donations can be made at SalvationArmy.ca/albertafires or by calling 1-800-SAL-ARMY. A $10 donation can also be made by texting FORTMAC to 45678.
