Rain falling over the Halifax region Friday helped crews tame a devastating forest fire in an outlying community, while tears filled the eyes of displaced residents as the reality of losing their homes started to sink in.
The Halifax Regional Fire & Emergency Service said the blaze that started blowing through the Spryfield area Thursday afternoon was finally under control by about noon hour Friday.
“We’re happy that we’re having this rain; we just need more of it,” fire department spokesman Lloyd Currie told reporters inside the Captain William Spry Community Centre on Kidston Road, which has been set up as a temporary shelter for those who have been evacuated.
“If we didn’t have the rain this fire may not be under control at this point.”
Currie said the Natural Resources Department believes the brush fire was sparked in the “general vicinity” of the McIntosh Run, although investigators hadn’t yet pinpointed a cause.
He said the wind-whipped flames and thick clouds of dark smoke spread across an area between 800 and 1200 hectares, burning down eight homes and damaging up to ten others, mostly on Aarons Way and Fortress Drive, both off of Purcell’s Cove Road in Fergusons Cove.
“We warned the people as fast as we could,” Currie said.
Halifax Mayor Peter Kelly told the media that provincial and city workers were all on the ball “once they knew the severity and speed of this.”
Kelly said one police officer suffered from smoke inhalation, but no other injuries from the fire have been reported. Most pets were saved, but he said a dog and two cats are presumed dead.
While some angry residents told reporters they should have been alerted earlier, Brett and Lara Ryan said they were impressed by the response of emergency services.
“There was just so much flame and smoke and it was just completely overwhelming," said Brett, whose family of five lost their beloved home at 14 Fortress Drive.
They returned to see what little was left of their house Friday, which Brett said did “provide a bit of closure.”
“If anything, we walk away from this just extremely grateful,” he said of at least having their lives.
Lara, her voice cracking, said it’s tough to think about the baby pictures and other sentimental belongings now gone forever. “It’s tough, of course. It’s our home and we loved it.”
Currie said about half of the 1,200 people who were forced out more than 400 homes had already returned to their residences by Friday afternoon.
Joanne Lawlor of the Canadian Red Cross said professional crisis counsellors and trained volunteers have been helping out however they can.
