From fires to flood, hard-earned advice from Fort McMurray on surviving hardship

Tomand Sue Clarke, and their home community of Fort McMurray, Alta., have been through a lot over the past four years.

In 2016 a wildfire spread through the city, displacing 80,000 people and consuming several sections of the city. Economic doldrums in the previously hot Alberta oil economy have been felt particularly hard in Fort McMurray, with the economic blow of the COVID-19 pandemic doing nothing to lessen strain in the community.

Most recently, the community was hit with flooding as ice damming on the Athabasca River forced the Clearwater River to reverse course and flood the city's downtown core. An estimated 1,230 structures were damaged.

"It was first the fires, then the downturn in the economy, and now the pandemic and the flooding I think next it's locusts or asteroids," said Sue.

"It seems to never end."

'Through hell and back'

Tomand Sue are originally from Fort Smith in the Northwest Territories, but they call Fort McMurray home. Sue said past calamities in the community, and the fellowship they gave rise to, seem to have left everyone ready to rise to whatever challengefresh woes might bring.

"People have been through hell and back [and] come hell or high water we'll pull through," Sue said. "We'll pull through and everyone will be stronger for it."

Both Tomand Sue said living through the evacuation of their home as the fires moved in was traumatizing Sue said it was three years before she became comfortable around campfires again, and Tomsaid he's "definitely not the same person I was in the past."

Their home was spared during the 2016 fires, and their home is at a high enough elevation in town that it wasn't flooded this spring, but seeing distress intheir community had them both immediately volunteering on the front lines.

For Sue, helping her neighbours wasn't only the right thing to do it helped her get past the onset of anxiety triggering sounds and events.

"I suffered really terrible PTSD after the fire and coming home," Sue said. "Two weeks prior to the flood, there was helicopters flying over nonstop and it kinda was bringing some of those feelings of fear and anxiety to the surface again."

You do what you can for whom you can, and expect nothing.- Sue Clarke

"Being able to just hammer down and do what you can and give what you can and be there with other people who you don't even know it just made me really thankful for everything and everyone."

While she was filling sandbags with other volunteers, or loading and organizing food baskets and supplies for people displaced to hotels and motels with nothing to eat, Sue focused on one thing.

"You do what you can for whom you can, and expect nothing," she said.

Tom delivered boxes of supplies to those living in the hotels and motels. Tom said that duty was perfect for him, especially because he doesn't like being around large crowds since the fires of 2016.

"One thing I'd like to stress to anyone going through something like we've gone through if they need any kind of help to turn to somebody, reach out and make that call," Tom said.

"There [were] so many people affected by what's happened here in the past four years, it's tough. So I really want to encourage everyone to take the time and reach out."