Alumni applaud helping hands while fleeing fires

By Paul Mayne

Firesforweb

The lives of Dan and Lindsay FitzGerald went from joy to despair within a span of 24 hours.

The Fort McMurray, Alta., alumni couple, Dan, BA’09 (Political Science & Government), and Lindsay, BHSc’09, welcomed their daughter, Tenley, into the world on May 2. Less than two hours after arriving home from the hospital the next day, the first-time parents were told to evacuate immediately as devastating wildfires closed in on their neighbourhood.

“As I laid down on the couch with Tenley, Lindsay got a call from a friend asking us if we knew what’s going on, that we should start thinking about packing up the house because there are evacuation notices being released in a number of neighbourhoods,” said Dan, a city planner in Fort McMurray.

“The fire had been burning since Friday. We could certainly see it on the horizon. But the last report we heard was the fire was not a threat to the city – so at that point everything was safe and sound. We were really focusing on ourselves and the new baby. When we got a call around 2-2:30 p.m. that said they were evacuating people because of the fires starting to come into the city, it became very real at that point. I looked at my phone; I had about 25 missed called from co-workers warning me. For me, the initial thought was where to go? Whatever we were going to do we just need to pack up and go somewhere.”