Rob Rice says many residents of Fort McMurray, Alta., still can’t stand the smell of campfire.
It reminds them of the treacherous drive a decade ago through a tunnel of flames as, in their rear-view mirrors, they watched the massive wildfire that ripped through thousands of homes.
“You’re seeing ash, smoke and flames everywhere,” said Rice, the 47-year-old owner of a Home Hardware in the city.
“Your life is on the line. You’re trapped in a traffic jam, smoke’s coming in your car, you can’t breathe. It was dark, it was gloomy, and it was very scary. I remember it very vividly to this day.”
Rice said a good friend had to leave in a car after flames began licking his truck.
Two people also died in a crash as they fled the wildfire.
“Everybody has a different story about their drive out and it affects everybody a different way,” Rice said.
“And that’s OK.
“How you overcome it is what matters.”
Signs of the giant blaze that entered from the city’s southwest on May 3, 2016, are still everywhere.
Thick, blackened and maimed tree stumps dot nearly every major road in the hilly community enveloped by some of Canada’s largest oil reserves. Elsewhere, fallen trees are scattered. Empty plots of land bookend rebuilt homes.
But when spring turns to summer, the lush, tree-green skyline will look as it did before the Horse River Wildfire, called The Beast, which forced 90,000 people out of the Wood Buffalo region, damaged or levelled 2,500 homes and scorched nearly 5,900 square kilometres of boreal forest.
“When the trees grow back, you don’t even know that there was fire 10 years ago, even though the fire is who we are,” said Sarah Thapa, 39, owner of the Avenue Eatery & Cafe.
“There’s green everywhere, there’s water flowing.”
Ten years on, the wildfire continues to ripple, changing how those who lived through it look after each other, and altering how disasters are communicated, fires are fought and homes are constructed.
Like many Fort McMurray residents, Rice came from away.
Born on the East Coast, his parents moved to the booming oil city in the 1980s. They planned to stay five years, make some money, then leave. They never did.
He started working at the Home Hardware when he was 14. In early 2016, he bought the store. A few months later, the fire hit.
At first, it was a plume of distant smoke.
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Within hours, it jumped Highway 63, the only route in and out of Fort McMurray. Fuelled by the hot and dry summer, it blasted into the city.
An evacuation notice was issued when homes began burning.
Rice closed up shop and sent workers home. He ran sprinklers on the roof of his house, packed his bags and left with his wife.
The drive out was a bottleneck. Trees on both sides of the road were going up in flames, which touched the roofs of cars.
Residents had to remain out for one month.
Rice was an exception.
Firefighters got his permission to break into his store a few days after the evacuation to grab gear. Then they called him and his staff back to help prepare for re-entry.
They worked 16-hour days for weeks and shipped in thousands of items, including refrigerators and cleaning supplies.
They slept in sleeping bags in the store, used a barbecue to cook meals and projected movies in the boardroom. They showered at the local recreation centre.
The city was basically a ghost town. “You drive around and an occasional deer would come across the street,” said Rice.
When everyone returned, the community looked out for one another.
“We left a note on our door for people to call us any time at the number below if they needed help. People always brought us coffee and McDonald’s,” Rice added.
Colten Petty helped save pets that people couldn’t take before fleeing because the fire had breached their neighbourhoods while they were at work.
Petty and some friends convinced Mounties to let them into the city four days after the evacuation.
“We saved 10 dogs, two cats and five kittens. I think the kittens were born during the fire,” said Petty, who has been living in Saskatchewan and working in Fort McMurray for at least the last decade.
He still keeps in touch with the owners of two rescued pooches.
Thapa, who was renting at the time with her husband, said the city cleaned up and rebuilt with speed.
“They put out the fire, and the community came back like fire.”
The Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo said 2,231 homes were rebuilt.
The Insurance Board of Canada said it received 60,000 claims totalling $4 billion in insured damages. “It was and continues to be the costliest insurance event in Canada’s history,” said national director Rob de Pruis.
The fire increased insurance literacy, he said, including the importance of building homes with materials suitable to the environment.
He said many took their payouts and left Fort McMurray, because of the trauma and fear of future wildfires.
The city’s population languished until last year, when it rose by 1.6 per cent to 107,740.
Thapa opened her café four years after the fire. When a vandal trashed it, locals stepped in with free furniture, plates and cups.
The support gave her the motivation to open a second business.
“We came to a booming town hoping to make a lot of money,” Thapa said about her 2013 move from Calgary.
“But I stayed not for the money. I stayed because of what this community is capable of doing for its people.”
The fire also changed those who fought it.
Ryan Pitchers, a fire battalion chief, said before 2016 it was a badge of honour to be called “leather lungs.”
That changed after a University of Alberta study found that many firefighters who fought the Fort McMurray blaze had developed asthma.
“We were basically, ‘Go, go, go.’ Most of our members didn’t stop for the first 48 hours,” Pitchers said.
Evan Crawford, president of the Fort McMurray Firefighters’ Association, helped fight the blaze. It felt like standing inside a furnace, he said.
When crews ran out of breathing equipment, they covered their faces with balaclavas, he added.
The 40-year-old said he remembers thinking about how the smoke was affecting his lungs.
“When you get a moment, you’re thinking of the long-term effects…. And you feel it because, I mean, you have a persistent cough.”
Since the fire, Pitchers and Crawford said their gear inventory significantly increased and firefighters regularly get checkups.
The fire also changed how a wildfire threat is communicated.
Tara McGee, a professor in the University of Alberta’s department of earth and atmospheric sciences, said her survey of Fort McMurray evacuees found they had little knowledge of the threat wildfires pose to communities and properties, and that emergency planning was limited.
“I asked how respondents learned that they would have to evacuate, and the highest group said they decided to leave because of what they could see.”
Provinces, including Alberta, now manage dashboards tracking the size and threat of wildfires. They also release notices and alerts about evacuations in advance.
Rachel Notley, who was Alberta premier in 2016, remembers standing on a balcony at the legislature on an unusually hot day when she learned a wall of flames was threatening Fort McMurray.
Notley became the face of the rescue, providing daily updates with officials, working to allay fears and provide information.
Such updates have become a staple for leaders across the country in crises since then, including the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2024 wildfire that destroyed homes in Jasper, Alta.
“You hadn’t seen major cities be at risk the way Fort McMurray was,” said Notley.
The wildfire threat has only grown across Canada since 2016, she said.
“It underlines the need to prepare for these events and also refocus our efforts to attack climate change.”
