An Ottawa native and his family, forced to abandon his home in the fire-stricken Alberta boom-town of Fort McMurray, is sharing his family’s harrowing experience.
Jason Blair told CTV Ottawa, “It was raining ashes everywhere” when he fled his home with his wife and two young children. Blair packed up his wife, two year old son and two week old baby when he heard an evacuation emergency over the airwaves, “you know when you’re watching your favourite TV show and that beep, beep, beep warning comes on, and it says this is only a test. Well they did it and it wasn’t a test, and I want you to know how emotionally shocking it is to hear something like that.”
Blair and his wife packed up the kids, scared, with just the essentials, no time to stop for food they just had to move fast. He says the worst part wasn’t leaving his home; it was abandoning everything in it, “if you went to my house right now it looks like it was robbed.”
Blair said they were forced to decide what’s important and what isn’t, “The only thing I wanted was a shoebox I had of things from my mom after she passed away. There is a note in there, there is her handwriting, and my wife and I couldn’t find the shoebox.”
He says the couple franticly kept searching, and they finally found the shoebox, “I tried to clear my head and think it through, and we found it.” In the end the family left with only one suitcase of baby clothes, a breast pump and two boxes full of photo albums including the shoebox.
The family has now landed in Cochrane Alberta, just outside Calgary, about 1500-kilometres from Fort McMurray. He doesn’t know if his home is still standing, he thinks so but is not sure. He’s just thankful his family is safe. What they will do next, he doesn’t know “my wife is bouncing my two week old with a tear in her eye trying to be strong, and asking ‘what are we going to do?’. I’m just trying to keep my composure; I don’t even know what to say. What are we going to do?”
