Wildfire near Highway 63 in south Fort McMurray
Photo credit: DarrenRD CC BY-SA

The wildfire that ravaged the city of Fort McMurray in Alberta, Canada, for more than two weeks forced the evacuation of some 88,000 residents—many of them making their way to Edmonton, the nearest large city, and some as far south as Calgary. Throughout the area, local services stepped up to help the evacuees, from shipments of food, bottled water, and diapers to prepaid debit cards to a Facebook page that gathered donations of prom dresses for teenagers forced to flee without their clothing. Edmonton and Calgary public and academic libraries did their parts as well, ensuring access to library services, providing library cards to evacuees, and doing outreach at evacuation centers. The fire, which started southwest of the city on May 1, reached the Fort McMurray community two days later and forced the largest wildfire evacuation in the province’s history. Some 88,000 people were evacuated from the area by May 4, with no fatalities other than two people killed in a vehicular collision. By May 6, nearly 30,000 evacuees had already arrived in Edmonton. The Edmonton Expo evacuation centre had processed 17,000 people as of May 12; at one point more than 2,000 with nowhere else to go were sleeping at the Expo Centre.

PUBLIC LIBRARIES ENSURE ACCESS

Although Edmonton Public Library (EPL) has often accommodated users from the Fort McMurray area in the past, said CEO Pilar Martinez, since the evacuation "We’ve waived any sort of requirement for verifying their library card. If their IDs are from Fort McMurray we'll give them a library card and they can use our resources. If they need to use email, or just want to read some online resources or physical materials, they can come and do so at three or four branches that surround the evacuee site." In the three weeks since residents began arriving, Martinez told LJ, EPL gave out almost 530 new cards. In Calgary, some three hours south of Edmonton, the Calgary Public Library (CPL) waived non-resident fees for library cards whether they were using the system’s resources on site or remotely. Even libraries as far afield as the Windsor Public Library, Ontario—more than 2,000 miles away—have offered free library cards to evacuees. Windsor waived its customary non-resident fee of $50 Canadian. “Windsor Public Library will be providing free library cards to Fort McMurray residents in our community who are working to put their lives back together,” WPL CEO Kitty Pope told Windsor Square. “Daily email communication with insurance companies, government agencies, healthcare providers, and emergency personnel can be performed at all of our branches. It’s the least we can do to provide Internet access and other materials during this time of need.” Mona Bacon, a librarian at EPL’s Stanley A. Milner branch, echoed that sentiment, recalling a man who came by in the first few days after the evacuation asking for computer access. “He told me that he had just arrived from Fort McMurray and needed to try to contact his insurance company to research the value of some of the items…he had lost. He said that he knew his home was gone, but he was unsure if his vehicle might still be okay since it had been left parked in a concrete underground garage.” The man was one of the volunteers who had stayed behind in Fort McMurray to assist with the evacuation, he told Bacon, but on Thursday night they were told they would have to leave as well. He came to Edmonton on one of the evacuation flights with nothing but his clothes and what he was carrying, and was staying temporarily at the Northlands evacuee centre. “This man was very calm—even sanguine—despite the ordeal he had just come through,” Bacon said, “an ordeal that will be ongoing as he and so many others attempt to restore some semblance of order and normalcy in their lives. A library card seems like a very small thing in light of everything they have lost, but we know that the resources of the library will be invaluable to these individuals and families over the next weeks and months. This man was very grateful to EPL for providing him with the means, especially computer access, to begin to rebuild his life and I was proud of EPL for responding so quickly with a plan to extend our services and resources to those in such immediate and desperate need.”

REACHING OUT TO ALL AGES

In addition to making sure Fort McMurray residents were able to use branch facilities, EPL took its mobile outreach programs to locations such as the Expo Centre. "Through our literacy vans we will be making visits there,” Martinez told LJ, “providing some programming and…support for families who need to entertain their children." CPL also brought its children’s services outside the library, taking library story times to the local evacuation centers and housing facilities. "We are assisting a number of educational institutions who have taken evacuees in by offering story times for the children of the families,” CPL senior manager of marketing and communications Katherine Cormack told LJ in mid-May. “All of our librarians have their ears perked for anybody that they hear of that may have a large number of children where we can help out. We're adding places as the days go by." The youngest evacuees were particularly in need of diversion and comfort, especially while their parents were navigating the system of insurance and social services. The first week of the evacuation, Martinez said, "we had somebody who came in with their little girls—they were looking around the branch and wanting to borrow some things, and the little girl said to the staff that she was in Edmonton because her house burnt down. It's devastating." Susanna Smallwood, library assistant at EPL’s Whitemud Crossing branch, recalled registering a multilingual family in mid-May who were looking for Spanish, French, and English picture books for their two young children. “They were so eager to get a card!” Smallwood said, adding that while the family’s home wasn’t damaged and the children hadn’t seen the fire, and so were not overly upset by the evacuation, they were shocked that the cousin they were staying with in Edmonton didn’t have a library card or books around the house. “Mom mentioned that two weeks was long enough for the kids to be without books!” said Smallwood, adding, “I was amazed at their upbeat sense of humor and their resilience [despite] all they have been through.”

ACADEMIC EFFORTS

The University of Calgary’s Libraries and Cultural Resources (LCR) staff began strategizing how  best to serve Fort McMurray community members before the first evacuee even arrived. With most students living off campus for the summer, approximately 1,400 evacuees moved into student housing. LCR—which operates eight university libraries on campus and throughout the city—worked with University of Calgary Information Technologies (UCIT) to give everyone access to public computers and Wi-Fi. Emergency assistance organizations such as Service Canada, insurance companies, and banks set up space in the Taylor Family Digital Library building to serve those in need. LCR also set up a gaming area in the library for children and teens, organized story times in the university Dining Centre for preschoolers, and held family-friendly movie nights. Staff members brought in some 500 books from their own homes, making sure everyone would have something to read.

A SLOW REBUILDING

At its largest, the fire spanned more than 500,000 hectares (slightly more than 1,900 square miles). Hot spots have flared back into life periodically, but rain and cooler temperatures throughout the region have slowed the fire’s growth significantly. On May 18, Alberta Premier Rachel Notley announced that a phased operation to return residents to the least damaged areas would begin June 1 and continue for the following two weeks. However, Fort McMurray’s own Wood Buffalo Regional Library, although undamaged by fire, will not be reopening right away, to accommodate staff members who are coping with their own challenges. “We have decided on a reopening date of July 4th,” acting director Melissa Flett—who was herself an evacuee—told LJ. “Our staff will begin work starting on June 25th. It will be a phased return with different employees starting on different days. This…will allow our employees to complete the necessary tasks at home to be better prepared to come to work and support our patrons.” As Fort McMurray rebuilds, its neighboring libraries continue to step up and serve its residents. "You can just picture yourself in that situation to a certain extent, and the panic that people must be in,” said Cormack. “And to be able to offer something—we're calling it a second or third home for folks, just to come into the library and either have fun if you're a kid or have a quiet moment as an adult, if you just need to get away for a minute—we feel pretty honored to be able to do that." When asked how LJ readers can help, library staff and directors unanimously recommended donating to the Canadian Red Cross’s Alberta Fires Appeal.