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Fort McMurray evacuee shares his story

May 9, 2016 | 5:00 PM

Imagine losing your home, life savings and not knowing what’s next in life. That’s the way Fort McMurray evacuee Bobby Kinley is feeling after being evacuated nearly a week ago.

Kinley stayed as long as he could before being forced to evacuate last Wednesday, May 4.

“It’s not a very good feeling, believe me. I stayed there all afternoon putting fires out around my motor home and truck, hoping this would just go away but it just kept getting worse and worse,” Kinley said.

“In the end, about 2 a.m. they finally said that’s enough and either take your motor home or truck but you got to get out. I didn’t have any gas for the motor home and if I took the truck then I’d have nothing to live in. So the municipality gave me gas to get out and the emergency operations centre gave me some chips, cookies and pop to go, got some more gas from them and came here,” he added.

Kinley said the morning before the evacuations took place, the mayor and fire chief had a meeting and said it was under control – which caught everyone off guard.

“Within two hours and the way the winds were blowing, it turned around and blew right into town. You could see it coming, it was wicked, roaring right towards the city,” he said adding he was able to get the motor home and dog out but couldn’t go back for his truck.

“I thought what am I going to do? All I had on me was my shirt. I didn’t even have a coat, it was a hot day, and it was the worst shirt I owned too. I came down here with a dirty old shirt and my work boots and that’s it,” Kinley said, fighting back tears. “Almost 40 years I lived there, did 10 years hauling salt and then almost 25 years with the municipality. I just retired last year as the roads foreman.”

While being in Meadow Lake for the past week, Kinley has been overwhelmed with support from everyone he has come across.

“You couldn’t ask for a better place for people. So caring and supportive, so giving it’s unreal. They gave me everything I ever wanted to get through this. Like support from the Salvation Army, mental health help through the hospital and the Red Cross’ support. They can’t do enough for me and I don’t know how I’ll ever pay the people back,” Kinley said.

When the evacuation order is lifted, he added he won’t be going back to Fort McMurray.

“I don’t want to see it… I want to remember the place the way it was. The subdivision I lived in, almost 800 homes, gone. At 9 p.m., my house on satellite link was still there and by 1 a.m. it was leveled,” he said.

Kinley learned he lost his life savings and his house after a couple of people drove him into the city to take a final look at his property. It was there he saw the house where he kept all his life savings in cash was gone.

Kinley is one of 80,000 people displaced due to the raging wildfire and while he might not return he said that won’t affect the future of the city.

“They’ll heal, you couldn’t ask for a more caring community. That’s probably the most caring community I’ve ever seen. This is really nice here (Meadow Lake) with all the people coming together to help, but there, they give all the time for everything,” he said.

So far, between donations, fundraisers and government matchings there has been $54 million raised for the Fort McMurray relief fund and Kinley said that’s what makes Canada so great.

“This is the best country in the world to live in. You can’t get a better country than Canada and I don’t know why anybody would want to go anywhere else. That’s why so many want to move here; it is probably the best country in the world to live in,” Kinley said.

Emotions overwhelming him and speaking through tears Kinley was thankful he got out with what he did.

“I ended up with a little more than a lot of people; I still have somewhere to live but a lot of people don’t have anything and I don’t know how they’re going to deal with it… I don’t know… I know a lot of people don’t carry insurance and that’s going to make things even harder. People with kids, what do they do, where do they go? I was there for 40 years and where do I go? I’m hoping things work out here,” he said.

As of Monday, May 9 the fire is engulfing 1,600 square kilometres – an area about the size of Houston.

 

cswiderski@jpbg.ca

On twitter: @coltonswiderski