Two Winnipeg friends had hoped to recreate good memories of the Camp of the Childhood Field in Nopiming Provincial Park with their two children during a trip earlier this week.
But while Eric Gauthier and Pascal Breton were fishing in their camp in Garner Lake, near the Ontario border, a ray near Bird River, about 60 kilometers southwest where the group installed the camp, caused a rapid forest fire that was detected on Monday.
“We are camping, we are fishing, we are on a beautiful beach in a very picturesque and absolutely impressive place,” Gauthier said.
“We captured many fish,” said his seven -year -old son Caleb Henley.
On Tuesday, Gauthier said the group had a refrigerator full of Lucioperca and that they were roasting fillets in the barbecue when they noticed a helicopter flying above, near the beach on the peninsula where they were parked.
They still didn’t know, but On Tuesday an evacuation order for Nopiming Park was issuedforcing residents, cottagers and campists to flee from the area.
When he first saw the helicopter, Breton said he had worried that officials could have thought they were cooking on an open fire, that the one that the one that the one that the one that the Province prohibits annually between April and November, With some exceptions.
But days before, the group took off in two boats from the cabin of a friend on Lake Beresford to Garner Lake, which is outside the cell service. That friend knew the group’s itinerary and observed the fire updates of the province from his home in Winnipeg.
When the friend received the evacuation notice for Beresford Lake, they called the conservation authorities to inform them where Breton and Gauthier camped with their children.
“When the helicopter landed, conservation came out and said: ‘We have to get them out of here, there is a very close heat,” Breton said.
When a forest fire began to spread in the Nopiming Provincial Park and its surroundings, two friends were on a camp trip with their children. When a helicopter arrived to pick them up, they saw first hand the situation in which they were.
The group of four was among the 13 people rescued on Tuesday by Wildfire and Conservation of Manitoba, a provincial spokesman told CBC News.
“When we got into the helicopter, I didn’t even think that the camp trip was over … I didn’t know it was a fire, but it was a fire,” said Breton’s six-year-old son, Remi Gautron-Breton, who told CBC News that the sun looked red while flying to the sky.
“It was just a wall of fire since they picked us up all the way back to Lac Du Bonnet,” Breton said.
Gauthier visited Nopiming Park for the first time as a young man and said it was devastating to see one of his favorite places burning from above.
“It is the devastation of losing that park. That place has a special place in my heart,” Gauthier said.
“I wasn’t thinking about our situation, our security. I was thinking that this was now. This is our recess court. This is where we come. This is our special place. It was devastating,” he said.
Breton said he was eight years old when his father and uncle took him on his first camp trip in the park. Since then, it is a memory that has been recorded in his mind, which keeps him returning for 36 years.
Now Breton fears that the forest fire can reduce the place where so many summers passed in “a lot of carbonized trees and rocks in the coming years.”
The fire completely destroyed his friend’s Beresford cabin, Gauthier said.
“Everything that remains of the cabin, from the image we have received, all that can see is the wooden stove in the middle. Everything else is pulverized,” Gauthier said, adding that he and Breton lost a truck parked outside the cabin.
On Saturday, the Nopiming forest fire was still considered out of control and has grown to more than 100,000 hectares of size, according to the province Most recent fire status report.
Bird River firefighters, Mac Kinghorn, said in a Video posted on Facebook On Saturday, Wildland firefighters will work to suppress the fire on Sunday.
The officials were previously focused on saving damage structures While the bad climatic conditions made insecure fight the fire in front.
“At this time, the rain that we obtained the last 24 hours has made a big difference for us. The floor is pleasant and humid, and hopefully that starts things,” Kinghorn said.
However, he said that it is not yet clear when the evacuees can return home.
Gauthier said it is important to “always tell someone where it will be” when in the field, accrediting their friend for helping them get home safe.
Breton said he is “eternally grateful” to his friend, his rescuers and the “brave” firefighters who work to turn off the forest fire.
“All who participated in helping people out of fires with that rescue effort are surprising,” Breton said.
