‘It just feels eerie’: Some residents return home after wildfire evacuation orders lifted

Two weeks after wildfires forced the people of Cranberry Portage to evacuate, residents are settling into a cautious return to normal.

Some 1,700 Manitobans were given the green light to return home beginning Saturday morning after mandatory evacuation orders were lifted in Cranberry Portage, Snow Lake, Sherridon and Herb Lake Landing.

Barb Bragg made it back to her home in Cranberry Portage at around 8 p.m. Saturday. By Sunday morning, she said, neighbours were cleaning up the chaos of leaving and mowing their lawns, but the impact of having fled still lingers.

“I don’t know how to describe it — it just feels eerie,” she said Sunday.

“It’s like two weeks have gone missing in the life of this place.”

She said she was able to drive in without incident or traffic jams. Power in the community has been restored — Bragg said firefighters had even rolled up the hoses she had left behind for her home and placed them neatly on her back step.

Bragg is “incredibly grateful” to firefighters and volunteers who stayed behind to ensure her community would be safe, but said she and others know it’s early in the wildfire season and are staying vigilant.

“I think that we all will have our go bags more readily available,” she said.

“I’m not going to unpack my big boxes of the treasures that I was going to take with me. I’ll take them out of the car, but, but they’re going to stay by my door for a while.”

Flin Flon, located around 35 kilometres northwest of Cranberry Portage, remains under a mandatory evacuation order. While most Cranberry Portage residents typically made the 20-minute drive to get groceries, medical services and other necessities through Flin Flon, they will be re-directed to The Pas, about an hour’s drive away.

Flin Flon has a much longer checklist to complete before allowing people to return can even be considered — preparations in municipal services, personal care homes, grocery stores and police, for example — said Lori Forbes, the emergency co-ordinator for the rural municipality of Kelsey, which includes Cranberry Portage.

“All of those services need to be running properly, and well before they can even consider sending people home,” she said.

“And from what I’m hearing from Flin Flon, that work is happening as we speak, where they are bringing folks back to the community for those essential services to be up and running as soon as possible.”

Forbes urged those who have been able to go home to remember that fire bans are still in effect.

“The fire season in Manitoba is clearly getting earlier and earlier. We always want people to be prepared … You don’t just have to have a fire licking at your heels before you’re ready and prepared to leave.”

Meanwhile, in Winnipeg, a hockey player with ties to Flin Flon brought the spirit of the sport to young people who had to flee from their homes Sunday.

Lucas Fry, 23, played for the Flin Flon Bombers for three seasons and was captain in 2023, his final year with the team.

During that time, he said, he formed close bonds with the people in Flin Flon and was inspired to put together an outdoor street hockey and soccer event at River Heights Community Centre when a family he kept in touch with told him their kids had only grabbed their hockey equipment in the scramble to evacuate.

“I really can only imagine what these little kids are going through just getting yanked out of their home and having that uncertainty of if it’s going to be there when they go back,” he said.

Unsure of how it would go, he put the word out on social media, and quickly, offers from people from Flin Flon and Winnipeg to donate food and drinks came in, and several other former and current Flin Flon Bombers joined in.

“Even just to see the community come together for an event like this, it’s been pretty amazing,” he said.

“I hope it’s just an opportunity for the kids to get out have some fun … even just for the adults to try and have some sense of normalcy and maybe see some people from Flin Flon that they always had in their daily lives.”

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca