Serge Chamberland is tired of hearing about Fort McMurray’s road to recovery and the community’s remarkable resilience on the one-year anniversary of the devastating wildfire that destroyed more than 2,500 dwellings and left two people dead.
The fact that an entire year has passed since his family home was destroyed is a tough reminder, he says, that not so much as a shovel has been put into the ground on the lot where it once stood.
“It is hard … that lots of people see the anniversary that is coming as almost like a celebration,” he told CTV News Channel on Monday. “For the people that lost everything there is nothing to celebrate. Only bad memories that we just don’t want to bring back.”
The post-fire building boom expected to help the Wood Buffalo region get back on its feet has been much delayed. The massive effort required to clear lots of contaminated debris, insurance complications, and the costs of winter construction has forced many to put off building.
Total housing starts in the Wood Buffalo census area declined in 2016 by 30 per cent versus the previous year to 135 units, according to data from the Canadian Home Builders’ Association (CHBA). The protracted decline in oil prices is largely to blame for housing weakness in this highly energy-sensitive region.
The latest housing data is, however, showing strong signs of picking up this year, with total starts in Wood Buffalo reaching 230 units in January and February, compared with the nine reported during the same two months last year, according to the CHBA.
For Chamberland, the pace of his housing recovery has been fraught with problems at virtually every impasse.
First there was the prolonged process of assessing the value of the home he lost. He says he now has a “sufficient amount of money” to rebuild. Then then there was issue of removing contaminated debris from his lot. After that, a showdown with a local dump, whose management, he says, refused to accept backfill soil delivered by the municipality after the fire.
“This spring we were just about to dig out, and we find out the landfill will not take the soil because it’s contaminated,” he said. Chamberland said the dump wanted to charge him $75 per tonne to accept the soil.
“It took a bit and some good will from some councillors and some people working on the recovery committee to enact a bylaw to force the landfill to take the soil that had been supplied by the city,” he said.
The Alberta government announced more than $7 million in tax relief for families whose properties were affected by the wildfire on Monday. Chamberland feels the response so far has not been adequate.
“The government seems to have been very quick in saying that they were willing to help and to rebuild, but it looks like as soon as the cameras turn off on them, they forgot about us,” he said. “(The) government seems to have disappeared, except for lip service.”
While much has been said about how the Fort McMurray fire brought out the best in Albertans, Chamberland notes the opposite has been true as well.
“Some people are really willing to help, and some people just seem to do what is possible to create stress and bad feelings and emotions,” he said.
