The Superintendent of a construction team that was protected in a shipping container when an out of control fire closed around it says they are lucky to be alive.
The crew of 19 people, with all but one of the communities of Manitoba, had been working in a workplace near Sandy Lake in the northwest of Ontario. The site included Sigfusson Northern and Milestone Environmental Contracting Inc. workers who were doing a project for Sandy Lake First Nation.
The terrifying video posted on social networks shows massive flames and smoke jumping on the tree line against a red sky, just meters from where the group was curled up.
“I thought we are going to perish, actually,” said Neal Gillespie, who works with Milestone Environmental Contracting Inc.
Gillespie said the fire was about 40 kilometers away when work day began on Saturday morning. The fire was a little closer around 9:30 am and the crew began to pack part of the team in case they had to flee.
“Things began to become a little worse,” he said.
He said that someone from Sandy Lake First Nation called them to put the fire departures, so they gathered some teams and moved to a work camp to 14 kilometers west.
“As soon as we began to get our team, in the next 45 minutes, so that the fire jumped on us,” he said.
He said the group had to leave their team and meet within the ‘very arid’ camp area, after the emergency planning they had been doing for weeks.
They used the cargo container to get away from the flames and heavy smoke.
“The fire emerged and danced literally around us,” Gillespie said, adding that some of the load containers around where they were sitting began to catch fire.
“I thought we were going to perish in reality. It wasn’t good.”
They decided to flee the shipping container, and when they left, part of it also caught fire
There were several attempts to get the helicopter crew, but the smoke was too thick to find them or land, Gillespie said.
“We had three hueys [helicopters] Come above our position, trying to locate us, it was so much smoke that they could not locate us. “
“They could locate the coordinates, but they could not locate the camp itself,” he said.
After four or five hours and rescue attempts without success, Gillespie said that the crew “successfully” led to a convoy to Sandy Lake First Nation along one of the main roads in the area.
“The cities [are] on very high alert. There are airplanes that return and come here as it would not believe. And there are helicopters flying here, so they are quite bananas here at this time. “
When Gillespie spoke with CBC News just before 7:30 pm CT on Saturday, he said that nine workers had already left the first nation on a plane bound for Winnipeg. The next plane that carried the other half of the return crew to Manitoba came shortly after that.
“Our crew is healthy and healthy,” Gillespie said.
‘Really traumatized’ crews: boss
Until Saturday night, the Fire Red Lake 12 had more than 150,000 hectares of size and is still out of control, said a provincial spokesman.
“We woke up only with an orange sky with ashes that flow throughout the place,” Sandy Lake First Nation, Delores Kakegamic of CBC News, said on Saturday.
A An evacuation order for the first nation was issued On Saturday afternoon, with approximately 1,700 flying members as priority evacuees, Kakegamic said. She said they are heading to Red Lake airport, where they will be sent to Kapuskassing, Cochrane, Toronto or possibly Niagara.
Kakegamic said some members of the construction team seemed “really traumatized” when they arrived at the first nation on Saturday.
On Sunday morning, Prime Minister Mark Carney published in X that the aircraft and staff of the Canadian Armed Forces have been delpped to support “emergency aerial evacuations around Sandy Lake First Nation”.
In response to forest fires that extend rapidly in the northwest of Ontario, the federal government has accepted a federal assistance request from the province.
We have deployed airplanes and personnel from the Canadian armed forces to support air emergency evacuations …
The Ontario Fire Information officer, Alison Lake, which supervises communications for the Red Lake 12 forest fire, confirmed that the 19 workers are safe and have been counted.
CBC News has communicated with Sigfusson Northern and Milestone Environmental Contracting Inc. but did not receive a time response for publication.
However, Sigfusson Published a statement on Facebook On Saturday night, confirming that its site had been affected by the forest fire.
“Our teams showed an extreme level of professionalism and courage against a situation that changes rapidly,” said the company’s position.
“We are grateful that our crews are now out of danger and on the way home with their families.”
Gillespie said that with each site they had gone in recent weeks, they had developed and practiced a protocol for what to do in case of evacuating due to forest fires.
“What we did, for what we trained, what we had in place worked directly to an T and probably saved our lives.”
Find the latest forest fire information in these sources:
Are you an evacuation that needs help? Contact Manitoba 211 Calling 211 from any place in Manitoba or email 211MB@findhelp.ca.
