Ask anyone in Denare Beach and they’ll tell you Rhonda Werbicki’s home was always the go-to Halloween house in the northern Saskatchewan village.
“We won’t be here for Halloween this year, and that’s killing me,” Werbicki said during a recent visit to Denare Beach. “I’m a huge decorator. I go all-out for Halloween.”
On June 2, wildfire destroyed Werbicki’s family home and more than 200 other residences in the remote lakeside community in northeast Saskatchewan, including 24 on the adjacent Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation reserve.
Werbicki currently lives with family about 750 kilometres away in Gimli, Man., but spent a couple of weeks in Denare Beach with her husband, who stayed behind to lead the massive effort to clear residential lots of debris.
“Every part of my life is 100 per cent different right now,” Werbecki said, lamenting the lack of routine, like meeting her girlfriends for coffee.
Talking about normal things — Halloween, the weather, the Toronto Blue Jays heading to the World Series — helps residents forget their abnormal circumstances. But it’s hard to escape the wildfire and its aftermath.
“I went to Costco last week and I’m totally fine, I’m shopping, and then I see the Christmas tree and I just started crying,” Werbicki said. “That emotion just comes to you. And I think you can ask anybody here; I think everybody’s felt that.”
Christmas is her favourite holiday, but this year will be difficult, Werbicki said. She could be talking about her family or every family in Denare Beach that lost a home.
“My Christmas tree was always very eclectic, with different things that my kids made, or ornaments someone gave us for our wedding, and all of that’s gone,” Werbicki said.
“It’s going to be very hard, but I don’t want to dwell there. I want to move on.”
Drone video shows cleanup in Denare Beach, Sask., nearly 5 months after destructive wildfire
Within weeks of evacuees returning to Denare Beach, crews began clearing debris and preparing lots for new homes. Locals are impressed with how quickly the townsite changed from charred piles of rubble to graded, serviced lots.
Crews hauled out up to 8,000 tandem truckloads of debris and hazardous material throughout the summer. Concrete and scrap metal left behind by the wildfire now sits in large piles waiting to be reused or hauled down south.
Brooke Kindel appreciates the massive effort to get lots ready for foundations and service lines. Her family spent the summer in temporary homes in Saskatoon and Creighton, the nearby border community where many Denare Beach residents ended up after the fire.
Like other families, the Kindels are racing against the weather to get the foundation poured to start rebuilding before the snow flies. Kindel said they’re building a large shop where they’ll park a camper trailer to live in until their new home is built.
“We’re angry that this happened, grieving the loss of what we had and also just trying to understand why this even happened because this didn’t need to happen,” Kindel said while walking around the lot where her family home once stood and cradling her baby daughter who was born while they were displaced in Saskatoon.
Locals are starting to brainstorm ways the village can incentivize people to move to Denare Beach, Kindel added.
“We’re kind of scared about what the future looks like and trying to figure out how to rebuild,” she said.
On the south side of Denare Beach, Trevor Sewap is helping prepare the lots on the Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation reserve for pre-fabricated homes coming from Prince Albert. The fire destroyed Sewap’s house and 23 others on the reserve, but now he’s helping his neighbours rebuild.
“I’ve known them all my life, since I was a little boy, so I’m happy to be working here,” Sewap said during a break from building forms for a new foundation. “Then when I’m gone … my kids will say, ‘My dad did that.’”
The First Nation purchased 24 replacement houses for members in Denare Beach and the first two are expected to arrive in November, said Clayton Sewap, the band’s councillor for Denare Beach. A volunteer firefighter crew that stayed behind managed to save 11 homes and structures, he said.
The First Nation is looking at using more “fire smart” materials for new builds in its eight communities. Clayton Sewap said every community should prepare for the worst.
“It happened in Lytton [B.C.], it happened in Jasper and it happened here,” he said. “It could happen anywhere, so be prepared, be fire smart and just be aware.”
Rhonda Werbicki plans to rebuild her Denare home, but understands why people would hesitate to do the same.
“I’m really afraid to build something that I love and get really attached to it and then it’s all going to burn again,” Werbicki said.
‘It feels just vacant’: Denare Beach resident Rhonda Werbicki prepares to rebuild in wake of wildfire
“We had a town meeting here the other day with some of us that did lose houses and I would say the No. 1 concern that everybody here has is: Is it happening again?”
The provincial government hired a firm to conduct a review of how the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency handled the wildfire and mass evacuations. The Opposition NDP is pushing for a more comprehensive public inquiry.
Some locals like Dustin Trumbley lobbied for Premier Scott Moe to visit Denare Beach, believing he had to see the destruction himself to understand what they experienced. Moe eventually made a brief stop there in September.
Trumbley and a couple of other residents who lost their homes in the fire spent about an hour chatting with Moe, pressing him for more fire mitigation resources to prepare communities for future wildfires.
“I really hope the meeting we had with them hit home because I can’t do this again,” Trumbley said. “It’s been a struggle for me to even come back here. But it will be home again.”
Trumbley and his fiance Joanne Churchill planned to get married at their Denare Beach home this summer. The home is being rebuilt, but the wedding is postponed until they feel like the community is ready to celebrate.
“The more structures go up, the more cleanup gets done, we will be all way tougher and way more close-knit,” Trumbley said. “It’s already happening and it’s awesome. So there are a lot of happy moments to come in the future.”
