An ashen wooded area stands mere feet from Flora Northwest’s home on Samson Cree Nation.
She is thankful it is still standing.
She had taken half a day off of work Friday to bring her grandson into town. On their way home, she said her grandson spotted wildfire.
The flames were high and spread quickly, Northwest said. She and her grandson weren’t home five minutes before the fire consumed an abandoned house and her brother’s home, then moved toward her house.
“Come on, we have to go,” Northwest recalled exclaiming to her grandson.
They rushed into her vehicle to leave, she said, as firefighters arrived — saving her house.
“It’s so hard to get housing here. It’s so hard to get renovations here. To burn houses like that, it’s not fair for the family, because we don’t have that kind of money for housing,” Northwest said.
“We’re very lucky to have our houses.”
A wildfire around Maskwacis, Alta., roughly 80 kilometres south of Edmonton, burned down four houses on Friday: the two on Samson Cree Nation and two others on the neighbouring Ermineskin Cree Nation.
The fire, which sparked the Maskwacis Fire Department to declare a state of emergency, took hours for firefighters from multiple agencies to get under control.
In a post on social media Friday, Samson Cree First Nation said all those affected were to go to the Howard Buffalo Memorial Centre in Maskwacis. SCN staff and Red Cross were on hand to assist the evacuees, and anyone who needed more information could call 780-585-3012.
Northwest said she helped her sister, who lives with a disability, evacuate her home.
According to 511 Alberta, Highway 611 between 2 Mile Road and 3 Mile Road in Samson Cree Nation was closed due to the nearby grass fire. Those roads reopened around 9 p.m.
Millet Fire Department Capt. Justin Rider could see the smoke from his town, roughly 30 kilometres north of Maskwacis.
“When you see a plume of smoke like that, it’s scary,” he said.
“Seeing something that size, that’s just unbelievable in our area.”
Eight different fire departments helped battle the fire, according to a Facebook post from Samson Cree Nation. Rider said his department dispatched a crew around 4:30 p.m. Friday.
Three Millet firefighters were sent to the scene with a tanker and the department’s side-by-side, according to a Facebook post from the department. Rider was on the scene, where they worked to stop the flames from spreading, he said.
“It was huge,” Rider said.
He has heard different size estimates, but he said the flames spanned about 1½ kilometres wide and more than six kilometres long.
“For seven [other] departments to be called in, it just shows you the magnitude of the situation,” he said, adding the Millet Fire Department doesn’t typically operate that far south
As of 3:45 p.m. Saturday, the Alberta Wildfire dashboard shows there are 23 total active wildfires throughout the province.
Much of the province is under some kind of fire exemption, the dashboard shows. Ponoka County, including Maskwacis, is under a fire advisory, which signals an elevated wildfire risk in the area but doesn’t outright ban any flames.
Rider urged people in the area to avoid burning grass or garbage, and to make sure any previous burns from the wintertime are fully extinguished, especially during windy conditions.
“It doesn’t take much,” he said, noting that one spark “can create chaos like it did yesterday.”
Northwest is concerned that someone from Samson Cree Nation may not have realized the advisory is in place.
“In our culture, fire is supposed to be sacred — and fire kills. Fire destroys,” Northwest said. “Look what happened to our trees, to Mother Earth.”
“It was scary,” she said, adding one of her grandchildren was traumatized.
She is isn’t sure when her brother will be able to get another house, she said, but he has gotten some help at the emergency centre.
