‘The fire is in my backyard’: new wave of northern Manitoba evacuees seek shelter in Winnipeg

Misty Harper was running on little sleep and frayed nerves after her family was forced to flee an out-of-control wildfire that threatened their home in northern Manitoba.

Harper, her partner Ryan Little and their five children, ages one to 15, spent Thursday night in a congregate shelter in Winnipeg, sleeping on cots, after they were airlifted out of remote Garden Hill Anisininew Nation.

“We didn’t really sleep well, did we?” she said, glancing at Little, while they took their one-year-old daughter, Diane, for a walk Friday morning. “It’s been rough. It’s hard to sleep in there with all the people.”

A provincial spokesperson said about 500 evacuees were in the shelter, at an indoor soccer complex on Leila Avenue, on Thursday night.

The site had reopened while a worsening wildfire situation forced more northern communities to begin full or partial evacuations this week. The number of evacuees totalled about 12,600.

Harper and others are waiting to find out when hotel rooms will become available in Winnipeg or elsewhere. The Manitoba government has a hotel-first policy during evacuations, but it is expanding shelter space in case thousands more evacuees are forced south.

“It’s been rough. It’s hard to sleep in there with all the people.”–Misty Harper

The City of Thompson has told more than 13,000 residents to prepare to leave in case a fire cuts off Highway 6. If that happens, a mandatory evacuation order will be issued, the city said.

A shelter inside the downtown Winnipeg’s convention centre will be set up starting Sunday, the province said. The move was made possible after the wildfire season’s second provincewide state of emergency was declared on Thursday.

The site will have room for up to 7,000 people, Premier Wab Kinew has said.

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The City of Winnipeg’s Billy Mosienko Arena, if needed, was expected to be up and running Friday, a government spokesperson said. The province is also reopening a shelter in Portage la Prairie.

More evacuees could be sent to other provinces, with about 1,400 already in Niagara Falls, Ont., amid Manitoba’s worst wildfire season in at least 30 years.

After waiting about eight hours at an airport near Garden Hill, a fly-in community, Harper’s family boarded a commercial plane to Winnipeg and was then shuttled to the Leila Avenue shelter.

Others boarded Canadian Armed Forces transport Hercules aircraft. Garden Hill, home to more than 4,000 people, declared a mandatory evacuation Wednesday. The community is about 600 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg.

Harper said the experience was stressful and tiring, especially for her children. “All the kids were getting tired and moody, and hungry.”

It wasn’t the first time a wildfire forced the family to flee. They stayed at a shelter in the same soccer complex in 2017.

Garden Hill resident Mathias Fiddler left the community with his partner and their six children, ages two to 13, on a Hercules flight. They got to the airport at about 1:30 p.m. Thursday, arriving at the Leila Avenue shelter at 2 a.m. Friday, he said.

He said everyone was feeling tired during the long wait to board the plane.

“The fire is in my backyard,” he told the Free Press from the airport Thursday night. “My kids keep asking if we’re going to be OK, but I talked to them. I just hope my home won’t burn down and everyone gets out safe.”

Fiddler was not looking forward to sleeping in a shelter. He said his family didn’t feel safe when they spent three nights in a shelter during the last evacuation.

“There is no privacy in the shelter. I don’t like it,” Fiddler said Friday, after spending the night in the facility, which was also used last month when more than 22,000 Manitobans were displaced by wildfires.

Fiddler said he was told his family will have to wait 72 hours for a hotel room. Some evacuees were moved to hotels in Steinbach, he said.

Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation (Nelson House) began a partial evacuation on Friday. People with serious medical conditions were moved out of the community.

Up to 160 similar high-priority residents from Pimicikamak Cree Nation have been moved to hotels in Winnipeg and Brandon since last weekend, Chief David Monias said.

The community, which was fully evacuated in June, has been shrouded in heavy smoke. Provincial Road 373, the only surface link in and out, has had intermittent closures.

Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak, which represents 26 northern First Nations, has called for “safe and suitable” accommodations.

During her walk back to the shelter, Harper’s mind was on her home community and the safety of people who were still there, including her mother, who is an essential worker, and firefighters who were battling to save Garden Hill.

“It’s really bad. The fire is really big back home,” Harper said, while north winds pushed wildfire smoke into Winnipeg, where an air-quality warning was in effect Friday.

The blaze covered about 2,500 hectares.

It’s anyone’s guess when it will be safe to return home. The 2017 evacuation lasted about two weeks. Harper encouraged evacuees to look after each other while they are displaced.

“Help each other out. That’s all we can do right now,” she said.

chris.kitching@freepress.mb.ca

Chris Kitching
Reporter

Chris Kitching is a general assignment reporter at the Free Press. He began his newspaper career in 2001, with stops in Winnipeg, Toronto and London, England, along the way. After returning to Winnipeg, he joined the Free Press in 2021, and now covers a little bit of everything for the newspaper. Read more about Chris.

Every piece of reporting Chris produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.