FORT MCMURRAY, Alta.—Henry Velasquez wants to return to the place where his home once stood—someday, but not yet.
Residents are being allowed to return to Fort McMurray in stages this week, a month after a voracious wildfire destroyed 10 percent of the city and forced a mass evacuation.
But Velasquez, a chemical engineer, will be hanging back in Calgary with his wife, Olga, and son Tomas, 3. He’s just not ready for the emotional punch of seeing what’s left of their townhouse in the Stone Creek neighbourhood at the north end of town.
In July or August, he'll re-evaluate, he said.
“I just want to go there before they start the demolition of everything, because I just want to see where my house is, see if there is at least one memory that I could rescue from what we have,” he said through tears.
“The most simple, the most small thing that I could recover from that, it will be such a treasure for me and my wife.”
In Ian Seggie’s apartment in the Timberlea neighbourhood, there’s still a bag of trash waiting to be taken out and a pot of soup ready to be heated on the stove.
“The eerie part for me is that everything is frozen in time,” he said from Calgary, where he’s been staying since May 3, when more than 80,000 people were ordered out of the city.
On Wednesday, June 2, roadblocks were lifted and government reception centres were open for business as residents began to return.
