Elsa Fitzgerald took the phone from her husband Monday evening when the emotions became too much for him to handle. On the other end, a provincial government employee repeated to Elsa what she’d told Stephen moments earlier.
Your house is gone. There are mental health supports available to you.
The rest of the call is still a blur.
“There’s nothing going to replace your home,” Elsa said through tears on Tuesday morning at the evacuation centre in Carbonear. “And we didn’t have insurance, so our home is gone and we don’t even know if we can rebuild.”
The call to evacuate came late in the night on Aug. 4, as the Kingston wildfire jumped from community to community on the north shore of Conception Bay, on the Avalon Peninsula and roughly 125 kilometres from St. John’s.
Elsa Fitzgerald couldn’t hold back the tears as she described how overwhelmed she felt upon learning her Western Bay home was gone. She said when she and her husband fled, they didn’t think they’d be gone for more than a couple of days. The CBC’s Ryan Cooke has their story.
The Fitzgeralds made quick decisions as they scrambled to leave, banking on the assumption they’d be home again in a few days, just like the last time a fire ripped through a neighbouring town.
They left out food and water for their two cats. Elsa left behind her prosthetic leg, which had been giving her trouble in recent days.
“I never even thought to bring my leg. I said, well, that will give it a couple days’ rest and it will be healed up when I go home. But now my leg is gone.”
Elsa also left behind the leg and foot rests for her wheelchair, not thinking to grab them in the rush to get out the door.
“That’s it. It’s all gone,” she said.
Stephen and Elsa met at trade school. They got married 15 years ago, and moved into Stephen’s family home in Western Bay. He spent his entire life in the home, from the time he was born in 1971 until the frantic night they fled the encroaching wildfire.
“It leaves me stranded,” he said. “There’s a lot of destruction in Western Bay. A lot of stuff that was valuable to me, and my wife. I just lost everything.”
Western Bay — an unincorporated town — was hit the hardest by the fire that first broke out seven kilometres away in Kingston on Aug. 3.
Premier John Hogan gave an update Tuesday morning, confirming 203 structures were lost so far, including 86 in Western Bay alone. Longtime residents say that’s almost every structure in Western Bay.
But not all of them.
Joe O’Leary was told on Monday night that his home is one of the few left standing. The 84-year-old built the house 57 years ago.
“Sad thoughts. A lot of my friends have their homes gone,” he said. “My wife’s sister lost her house and 10 of her sheep. The post office right across the road from me is gone. Most of the guys I know, their houses, most of them are gone.”
O’Leary said his home is in good shape on the outside, but he’s not sure about smoke damage to the interior. If he can go back, he will. But it will always be accompanied by a solemn feeling.
“Loneliness,” he said. “I mean, the post office was right across the road from me. And Cull’s Store. That’s all gone. I lived with that. That was there, every day, every morning, you wake up and it’s there … and now it’s all gone.”
For Elsa, the devastation is met with a resilient urge. Nothing can stop her from going home again.
“Oh I’m definitely going back, supposing I do have to pitch a tent,” she said. “I’ve got a winterized tent I can borrow and I’ve got a wood stove that can go into it. And if I got to do that, then that’s what I’m going to do. I’ve got to go back. That’s home.”
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