A humanitarian aid group has arrived in Denare Beach to provide assistance to residents in the recovery of lost possessions for forest fires.
218 permanent residences were destroyed by Wildfire last month, when the Wolf fire crossed the Northern village on June 2 and forced hundreds of residents to flee. Three weeks later, residents returned to a community that was unrecognizable for them: full of ashes, carbonized frames and lost memories.
“We worked hard to connect with them. They had many problems with which the phones were low, the electric lines were out,” said Tammy Apoke, Canadian manager of disaster aid of the Samaritan bag.
“Once we did, it was fast, ‘Can you come?'”
Samaritan’s bag announced earlier this month, would implement team members in the community to manage operations and lead the volunteers.
Thirty -five volunteers embarked on a two -day walk from the base of the group in Alberta and arrived at Denare Beach, where they established the camp on July 11.
“Our goal is to always enter and be totally self -sufficient,” said the suitor. “We don’t want to take advantage of, you know, resources that the community needs.”
Normally, the volunteers would stay in a local church and make classrooms into rooms during the night where they could eat and sleep, he said.
In this case, the suitor says that the community did not have the ability to accommodate people, so they built a “zero” camp.
The group installed a series of Alaska tents in a field and brought almost 20 pieces of equipment, including recreational vehicles, a kitchen, generators and a two -level trailer to use during their stay.
“Everything we need is in those trailers,” said the suitor.
“Whether PPE Gear for our staff and our volunteers, be it teams such as chainsaws, sieves, shovels, bombs.”
Hunting through ash
Andy Northup, the Samaritan Bag program manager, says they have received around 80 search applications since their arrival, and they have 35 to complete.
For each request, he says that an owner will accompany the volunteers to their property, will tell them what to look for and where to find.
“Then they literally enter there with the sieves and shovels and cross the ashes looking for things,” Northup said.
You can ask volunteers to look for “anything, from wedding alliances to polls.”
Even in cases where they do not necessarily find what the owner is looking for, Northup says they will try to bring something tangible, such as a cup of tea or a tea set, because it still has value.
“People were able to advance with that,” he said. “That is something that survived the fire.”
Northup says that in most cases volunteers have been able to find articles in the ashes, which is important for the recovery of a person.
Residents need to have the time and space to share their stories and stories behind the articles found, he said.
“Just to use the word ‘celebrate’ lightly with the family, just to be with the family,” Northup said. “Even if it is [the item] It is no longer good, it allows the family to talk about things. “
The suitor says that many times the elements that would not be considered important before a disaster, become extremely important after one.
She points out at the beginning of her stay, when a group of volunteers was helping an owner to look around her property.
“There was a small angel, a porcelain angel and a wing had broken in the fire … but we found both pieces,” said the suitor.
“The owner is like ‘My grandmother gave me that when I was a girl and she was my favorite person in the world and I forgot that she even had that.”
More recently, he says that another group of volunteers was in a house of owners and they didn’t have much luck in their search that day.
The suitor says that the team leader had asked everyone to end up for the day, and two of the volunteers had pretended that they did not listen to him so that they could make some more blades.
“It was in those last two shovels of the day that the wedding rings, the necklaces and the coins and the things that these owners were looking for,” he said.
“The owner begins to cry and was very grateful and simply melted in the arms of our team’s leadership. And for that we are there. It’s not for us, it’s not about work, it’s about people.”
Recovering from disaster
Emergency management teams are learning more about long -term recovery and how people recover from disasters as it continues to develop and grow, said the suitor.
She says she used to believe that once a community was cleaned, the residents inside her left the disaster. Instead, the suitor says that many of them “get stuck.”
“They don’t know how to advance,” he said.
Now the group provides a long -term recovery program for people not to fall into cracks.
“People need to feel seen,” said the suitor. “They need to feel heard and that they can tell their story about what happened.”
She says that the other “important part of recovery” is to return their control to people, especially in cases where they have had to evacuate.
“The floods of your house or your house burn or the trees go through your roof or whatever you can see … it is out of control of all that,” said the suitor.
That is why volunteers work together with the owners in the recovery of their possessions.
“Da [them] Control to say that I can make these decisions, “said the suitor.
“These are my decisions. This is under my control and now I will move on with that.”
