Fort McMurray, a Canadian Oil Boom Town, Is Left in Ashes
After losing everything in wildfires that have
consumed parts of Alberta, Canada, many evacuees are saddened by what
they have lost, but thankful for their survival.
By CCTV, via REUTERS and SKY, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
on Publish Date May 9, 2016.
Photo by Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
LAC
LA BICHE, Alberta — Fort McMurray, or Fort Make Money, as some
Canadians nicknamed it during its recent boom years, was the kind of
place where second chances and fat paychecks beckoned.
Those who settled there were trained engineers, refugees from war-torn countries and strivers from across Canada
and beyond, drawn to a dot on the map in northern Alberta, a city
carved out of boreal forest in a region gushing with oil riches.
Even
after the price of crude began to collapse in late 2014, erasing
thousands of jobs, many residents managed to hang on, tightening their
belts while waiting for the good times to return.
Then,
early last week, smoke and ash filled the sky, the first harbingers of a
catastrophic wildfire sweeping toward the city. The entire population
of about 88,000 was forced to evacuate, most in a frantic rush.
Since
then, the blaze has consumed whole swaths of Fort McMurray, ranking it
as one of the most devastating fires in Canada’s history. The
fast-moving flames turned many of the city’s homes — and the baby photos
and wedding albums and other treasures that could not be packed in time
— into little more than charcoal.
But
even as displaced residents file insurance claims and pick through
piles of donated clothing, many are adamant about rebuilding the city
that gave them a financial lifeline as rare as the source of its
prosperity, the largest oil sands reserve in the world.
Fort
McMurray “is the only place you can go, sink 10 years of your life and
bank enough money to retire,” said Kevin Lewis, 55, the owner of a
transportation company. He fled to an evacuation center here in Lac La
Biche, 137 miles south, in his pickup with only his wallet and the
clothes on his back.
Continue reading the main story
For the moment, lower temperatures have allowed firefighters to gain some control over the blaze,
which has turned away from the city. But it is still raging in a nearby
forest, and the danger of its returning to the city remains.
Until environmentalists challenged the Keystone XL
oil pipeline this decade, the city and the Alberta oil sands reserve
were little known outside of Canada and the world’s oil companies. But
attempts to convert its deposits of tarlike bitumen into fuel go back
decades, and Fort McMurray’s fortunes have risen and fallen with them.
Its
first modern boom was in the 1970s, when the government decided to
place its bets on the costly-to-produce oil sands and billions of
dollars flowed into the area. That ended with a thud as oil prices sank
in the 1980s, and the sands suddenly seemed like a dying curiosity.
The
latest, and much bigger, boom was unleashed in the last 15 years as oil
prices soared, along with China’s demand for crude, and as technology
to extract oil from the sands improved.
Fort
McMurray, which got its start as a fur trading post in the 1800s, was
never as pretty as the forest that surround it; the downtown, which has
escaped the wildfire so far, is an architectural time capsule of the
1970s, filled with low-rise buildings thrown up in a hurry. And even at
its best, the city has a kind-of “town and gown” feel, with most of the
jobs with big oil companies becoming what locals called “fly in, fly
out.”
Those
employees came from across Canada and were immediately bused by their
employers to camps closer to the remote oil sands projects, where they
worked two-week shifts before returning home.
Still,
with so many jobs in welding and construction and transportation, the
population ballooned to more than 90,000 at its peak from 38,000 in
2000. Land that cost 27,000 Canadian dollars an acre at the turn of the
millennium had reached 1 million Canadian dollars (about $775,000),
while new housing developments ate ever deeper into the surrounding
woods of black spruce.
“Doctors and lawyers don’t make the money we make,” said Chad Abbott, 50, a scaffolding company supervisor.
Mr.
Abbott moved to Fort McMurray in 1998 with his family and worked at an
oil sands plant site, earning about 250,000 Canadian dollars a year. He
was part of a tightknit community in the city composed largely of oil
services employees, trades workers and engineers, many of whom have lost
all they own.
Initially
during the most recent boom, Fort McMurray had welcomed keeping much of
the fast-growing work force in the remote work camps. But those
workers’ lack of connection to Fort McMurray — as well as the lack of
their dollars being spent there — eventually stirred resentment.
“In
the early days, they didn’t want the camp workers in town because they
would bring with them all you would imagine in the Wild West: come into
town, shoot up the town and head back out,” said Stephen Ross, the
president of Devonian Properties, which began buying local land in 2000.
The
city could not hold all of the seediness at bay; for a time a raft of
strip clubs did good business. But over the years, Fort McMurray
smoothed its rougher edges. Its neighborhoods filled with a melange of
accents and nationalities, from Newfoundlanders to Filipinos employed at
hotels and gas stations and heavy-equipment movers from Fiji.
Before
the fire, the number of strip clubs had dwindled to just one,
Showgirls, near the end of the town’s main drag, Franklin Avenue.
Several blocks away, the green-domed Markaz ul Islam mosque had become
too small for Friday prayers, forcing the overflow crowds to use the
gymnasium of a nearby Catholic school.
Samya
Hassan, 51, a hijab-wearing refugee from Yemen, came to Canada in 1990
and settled in Fort McMurray four years ago with her family. They
prospered. Her husband got a job as a truck driver, she as a cashier —
enough to put their three children through school.
That
all ended Tuesday when she and her family fled. Fire roared next to the
highway as they crept along in bumper-to-bumper traffic; she used her
headscarf to breathe through the heavy black smoke that blotted out the
sun.
Ms.
Hassan was able to grab her passport, but no family photos. “I’ll have
to start life over again like 25 years ago,” she said.
For
countless displaced residents, it is the lost things money cannot
replace that will haunt them. Ariana Caissie, 22, took her two cats, but
said her late father’s recipe cards were lost when her mother had no
time to save them. “They’re just memories now,” she said.
Residents,
including local politicians, are committed to rebuilding, but questions
remain about what Fort McMurray will be. “Depending on what we’re able
to dream up — and actually do and deliver — it’s a whole new world,”
Melissa Blake, the mayor, said in an interview.
Adam
Rairdon, a former chef, has invested too much in Fort McMurray to walk
away. After spending about $20,000 to study industrial radiography, he
left Halifax, Nova Scotia, with his wife, Laura, four years ago and
found a job in the boom town. About a month before oil prices started to
decline, they bought a house and began renovations.
Mr.
Rairdon, who took leave from his job to rebuild the house, recalls
listening to news of oil prices tumbling on the radio as he tore down
walls. Around the same time, Ms. Rairdon became pregnant.
By
January 2015, his employer started cutting back. Unlike some
co-workers, Mr. Rairdon kept his job but lost about a quarter of his
pay, he said outside the hall on a fairground in Edmonton, now a
temporary home for him, his wife and their 10-month-old baby.
Mr.
Rairdon has seen video confirming that their home is largely destroyed.
Soon, he will drive his wife and child to his in-laws’ home in New
Brunswick. After that, Mr. Rairdon said, he will buy a secondhand
trailer and return to Fort McMurray to help rebuild.
“As
soon as they open the gates, I’m going with a shovel and work boots and
we’re going to clean up our town,” he said. “There are many that
probably can’t, many that can’t afford to and many who are just so
brokenhearted that they probably won’t. I can only speak for myself when
I say I’m not done.”
A Canadian Oil Boom Town, Is Left in Ashes
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on
Monday, May 09, 2016
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