A humanitarian aid group has arrived in Denare Beach to provide residents assistance in the recovery of possessions lost to wildfires.
218 permanent residences were destroyed by wildfire last month, when the Wolf Fire tore through the northern village June 2, and forced hundreds of residents to flee. Three weeks later, residents returned back to a community that was unrecognizable to them — filled with ashes, charred frames and memories lost.
“We worked hard to get connected with them. They had lots of issues with phones being down, power lines were out,” said Tammy Suitor, Canadian Disaster Relief Manager for Samaritan’s Purse.
“Once we did, it was a quick, ‘can you please come?'”
Samaritan’s Purse announced earlier this month, it would be deploying team members to the community to manage operations and lead volunteers.
Thirty-five volunteers embarked on a two-day trek from the group’s base in Alberta and arrived at Denare Beach where they set up camp July 11.
“Our goal is to always go in and be totally self-sufficient,” Suitor said. “We don’t want to draw on, you know, resources that the community needs.”
Normally, volunteers would stay at a local church and turn classrooms into overnight rooms where they could eat and sleep, she said.
In this case, Suitor says the community did not have the capacity to house people, so they built a camp “from the ground up.”
The group set up a number of Alaska tents in a field and brought nearly 20 pieces of equipment including RVs, a cook-kitchen, generators and a two-level trailer to use during their stay.
“Everything we need is in those trailers,” Suitor said.
“Whether it’s PPE gear for our staff and our volunteers, whether it’s equipment like chainsaws, sifts, shovels, pumps.”
Hunting through the ash
Andy Northup, the program manager for Samaritan’s Purse says they have received around 80 search requests since their arrival — and have 35 left to complete.
For each request, he says a homeowner will accompany volunteers to their property, tell them what to look for and where to look.
“Then they’re going in there literally with the sifters and shovels and going through the ash looking for things,” Northup said.
Volunteers could be asked to search for “anything from wedding bands to urns.”
Even in instances where they don’t necessarily find what the homeowner is looking for, Northup says they will try to bring back something tangible — like a teacup or tea set — because it still holds value.
“People were able to go forward with that,” he said. “That’s something that survived the fire.”
Northup says in most cases volunteers have been able to find items in the ashes, which is important to a person’s recovery.
Residents need to have the time and space to share their stories and the stories behind the items found, he said.
“Just to be able to use the word ‘celebrate’ lightly with the family, just to stand with the family,” said Northup. “Even if it’s [the item] not good anymore, it allows the family to talk about things.”
Suitor says many times the items that wouldn’t be considered important before a disaster, become extremely important after one.
She points to early in their stay, when a group of volunteers were helping a homeowner look around their property.
“There was a little angel, a porcelain Angel, and a wing had broken off in the fire…. but we found both pieces,” Suitor said.
“The homeowner’s like ‘My grandma gave me that when I was a little girl and she was my favourite person in the world and I forgot that I even had that.'”
More recently, she says another group of volunteers were at a homeowners house and they weren’t having much luck in their search that day.
Suitor says the team lead had asked everyone to wrap up for the day, and two of the volunteers had pretended they didn’t hear him so they could do a few more shovels.
“It was in those last two shovels of the day that they found the wedding rings, the necklaces and the coins and the stuff that these homeowners were looking for,” she said.
“The homeowner starts to cry and was just so thankful and just melted into the arms of our team lead. And that’s what we’re there for. It’s not for us, it’s not about the work, it’s about the people.”
Recovering from disaster
Emergency management teams are learning more about long-term recovery and how people recover from disasters as it continues to develop and grow, Suitor said.
She says it used to be believed that once a community was cleaned, the residents within it moved on from the disaster. Instead, Suitor says many of them “get stuck.”
“They don’t know how to move forward,” she said.
Now the group provides a long-term recovery program so people don’t fall through the cracks.
“People need to feel seen,” Suitor said. “They need to feel heard and that they can tell their story about what happened.”
She says the other “important part of recovery” is giving people back their control — especially in instances where they’ve had to evacuate.
“Your house floods or your house burns down or trees go through your roof or whatever that looks like…. you are out of control of all of that,” Suitor said.
That’s the reason why the volunteers work alongside the homeowners in the recovery of their possessions.
“It gives [them] control back to say, I can make these decisions,” Suitor said.
“These are my decisions. This is in my control and now I’m going to move forward with that.”
