Saskatchewan fire is estimated to have burned almost 14,000 acres near Prince Albert and forced 75 households to evacuate their homes
Candice Sinitoski had advance warning that she’d have to evacuate the animals from her riding arena as a fire raged north of Prince Albert, Sask., last week.
But that didn’t make it less stressful.
“It kind of becomes overwhelming a little bit but you just need to go into being proactive,” said Sinitoski, president of Red River Roping and Riding Arena.
The arena had 30 head of cattle and 22 horses that needed to be evacuated from the area threatened by the Cloverdale fire. Sinitoski said they only had a short period of time. Desperately, they posted on Facebook, asking for help removing the livestock. The community responded with trailers to haul the animals and places for the animals to stay.
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“It was really something to kind of watch the community come together for this,” Sinitoski said.
“When it comes right down the wire, it doesn’t matter, there will be people waiting to help you out and do what they can for you immediately.”
Because of the community rallying behind them, Sinitoski said they were able to get the animals out. Most of the livestock went to Northern Livestock Sales in Prince Albert.
But it wasn’t just the community of Prince Albert coming together to help. It was the whole province.
When Brennin Jack heard about the wildfire, he put out a post on Facebook, offering refuge for livestock at Jack Auction Group’s pens at Saskatoon Livestock Sales.
He never expected it to blow up.
“It exploded with over 1,400 shares and was viewed by over 200,000 people,” Jack said.
Not only did Jack’s post help for evacuating livestock, it caused a ripple effect of people offering to take in animals for those affected by the fire.
“We had such an outpouring of people kind of follow the post or offering services so that they didn’t have to bring (the livestock) quite as far as Saskatoon,” Jack said. “That post really spurred a lot of activity.”
From there, things grew. Jack and his friend, Karen Brown, created the Facebook group Sask Animal Evacuation to help evacuate livestock in emergency situations.
Although the group was made because of the Cloverdale wildfire, Jack said they want to make aid accessible for all emergencies.
“With the help of this group we’re hoping that, in the event that something happens in the future, we just put it in that group and within a matter of minutes we should have our own little army of people ready to rock and roll and help people out,” Jack said.
On May 20, the group had 460 members after only three days since it started, as well as many posts offering help.
“Obviously there was a bit of a need for it, and thankfully to my knowledge all the livestock and people that needed to be moved out got their livestock out safely,” Jack said.
On May 20, the Cloverdale fire was confirmed to be under control, three days after it started on May 17. It could be weeks before it is fully extinguished.
Officials estimate it has burned almost 14,000 acres and forced evacuations of 75 homes, according to the City of Prince Albert.
Because the fire is contained, Sinitoski spent May 20 moving the animals back to Red River Roping and Riding Arena.
