They say there are moments in life that define you and change you. Moments that mark time and everything is either before or after that moment.
I have had several of these moments in my life. Deeply personal moments that have forever changed the way I view my life. Moments that have marked my marriage, my family, and now my entire city.
I live in an area that doesn’t see a lot of natural disasters. We get a lot of snow, forest fires come close and one year we had some major flooding downtown. I watch tragedy happening around the world, everything from bombings and school shootings to natural disasters. My heart goes out to these people and these communities, but, to be completely honest, these events are quickly things of the past and I have moved on with my life.
We don’t have cable at our home and I stopped getting the newspaper, so any media and news I see is on Facebook, so it’s easy for these events to move quickly from my mind.
At the end of April I decided that I needed a Facebook break and would be off of Facebook from May 1st till May 7th. I was tired of constantly being connected yet feeling completely alone. It felt like my life was being drained away from constantly being on Facebook and I knew that I just needed a break.
May 1st was a Sunday. My husband was at work. I went to the 11:30am service at my church. My mother in law was there and helped with the kids. I went to take my 8 month old son to the nursery but there was no one there to watch him so I sat in there with him. One other girl came in but her dad stayed with her. I didn’t have Facebook to keep me distracted and I had forgotten my book at home. I spent some time on my phone and just played with the baby. It was a pretty uneventful, normal Sunday.
That evening I was outside on our deck reading while the kids played. My mother in law texted me about a fire outside the city. She told me she saw smoke. I saw and smelt nothing. It was my first day off of Facebook but I figured it would mostly be people posting photos of the smoke, the same as when it snows in May and every single person feels like they must put it on Facebook in case someone missed it. I took the kids for a walk around 8pm and saw the cloud of smoke. I didn’t think much about it because there seems to be fires every year and a few times they have come close. From what I heard there were 5 fires spread around the city, but they were under control.
The Sunday before, my husband had taken the baby to the hospital because of laboured breathing and that following Wednesday I took him to the doctor and was given antibiotics for bronchitis. That Monday, May 2nd, I kept our 4 year old home from school since the smoke was bad and air quality was poor. My baby was fighting bronchitis and I have asthma, so I wanted to avoid the outdoors as much as possible. Plus, I wanted a lazy day at home.
Tuesday, May 3rd, the smoke was still bad, fires still burning, but I was not worried. I knew people in areas that were being evacuated to Mac Island and I was concerned for them and those areas but it still didn’t seem that bad. I took my daughter to school because I wanted to go grocery shopping. It was the first Tuesday of the month and I was going to take advantage of the 15% off. I took a few photos of the smoke and got my kids inside the store as quickly as possible, due to the smell outside.
I had a lot of plans for that shopping trip and took my time selecting what I needed to start off my new healthy eating lifestyle.
My friend lived across the street from the store and I texted her when I arrived to see if she would be interested in just walking around with me so we could hang out and chat while still accomplishing errands. She said she had just gotten home and was tired, but maybe next time. I text her a few more times and sent out a few other texts, but my 2 children were getting hard to control and I was busy with trying to shop so I put my phone away.
It was just after 2pm when I was finally checking out and very frazzled and couldn’t wait to get home, change the baby and just “relax” inside the house. I missed a phone call from my husband and figured I better call him back and noticed I also had 12 missed text messages. He answered the phone and I was stressed but trying to be calm as I was holding the baby, trying to keep the toddler from falling out of the cart and paying for groceries. He asked where I was, “I’m busy, I’m grocery shopping, the kids are fighting, what do you want?” was my very clipped, trying to hold it all together, annoyed reply. He told me that the fires were getting pretty bad, parts of the city were being evacuated and that he would be heading home. Oh...
So it’s day 3 of being off of Facebook, we don’t have cable and I rarely listen to the radio. I saw the smoke but was otherwise blissfully unaware. I said to the lady who helped bag my groceries and was getting ready to help me to my van, that my husband called me because of the fires. I mentioned my oldest being in school and she told me she had heard they were evacuating the schools. I called my mother in law who works at the same school and couldn’t get an answer. I still wasn’t worried though. I figured that, as the librarian, she was probably making phone calls and helping with the evacuation, if that school was being evacuated.
My friend called to ask if I could get her boys because she was on the other side of the city and couldn’t get to them. I saw that my gas tank was low and when I looked at the gas station across from the grocery store, it was lined up to the street. That’s when I started to think, this can’t be good. Everyone was driving away from my neighbourhood while I drove towards it.. Ok now it really doesn’t look good.
I ran inside and grabbed some cash, important papers and the dog. I fully intended to pick up my friends kids and come back home to wait for my husband and pack up a bag just in case. I had turned on the radio as I left the grocery store and listened as they told us to stay calm and be prepared. I drove towards the school, my mother in law called to tell she had been busy calling parents. I told her I was going to pick up my friends kids, she warned me not to go and I should have listened. I told her to bring my daughter back to her house and I would get her afterward. I traveled south while every other person went north. I got the phone call from my friend not to worry about her kids, they had been evacuated, someone else had them. I turned around intending to go home, to meet up with my husband, daughter and mother in law.
I never made it back home.
Suddenly, I was in the midst of a natural disaster, one that would be viewed around the world.
As I left Save On Foods that afternoon around 2:15pm the lady helping me to my van made a comment; “it’s going to be a long day”. We had no idea just how true that statement would turn out to be.
