Caroline Zentner
Lethbridge herald - FORT MACLEOD
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Her eyes glanced heavenward and a broad smile broke out on Robin Daniels' face when she heard Fort Macleod Mayor Shawn Patience say her home was still standing after Wednesday's grassfire.
"There is a God," she said at the Fort Macleod Community Hall, which had been opened as a reception centre for evacuees.
The home that Daniels shares with her husband, Richard Labiuk, is located just off Highway 2 about 10 kilometres north of Fort Macleod. Their 15-acre property was directly in the path of the fire. When Daniels left for a medical appointment in Fort Macleod in the early afternoon, the fire seemed to be heading north of their property.
"The next thing I knew it was getting a little darker and I looked out the window and (I saw) a bunch of fire trucks running around. They had moved the road block; it was right at the end of our range road," Labiuk said. "The smoke was really coming our way and it was moving fast. A guy from Volker Stevin came in and said 'You'd better get out now.'"
Labiuk got the car out of the garage and managed to scoop up his heart medication, some important papers and then tried to gather up the couple's four cats and two dogs. But he said they were spooked by the fire and he managed to get one of the dogs into the vehicle. The other dog, a 10-month old ridgeback with a microchip, ran off and the cats scattered.
"I couldn't see more than about a 100 metres and by the time I got to the driveway I had my lights on and I couldn't see. It's a good thing I know the road," he said.
He could see the flames at the fence line of their nearest neighbours to the west.
"I knew then that our house was probably going to go," he said in an interview before the couple had learned their home survived the fire. "There's a lot of mementoes in that house."
"It's just stuff," Daniels said.
Daniels and Labiuk spent the latter part of the afternoon at the Fort Macleod Community Hall which had been set up as a reception centre for evacuees.
"We just hope that we all come out of it OK. Financially it's not going to hurt us because we're insured . . . that part is covered; it's just not knowing what's happened to our animals. That's the hard part," Labiuk said.