Global Courant 2023-05-31 19:31:35
Katherine Tarateski was only about 20 minutes from her home, but police had already cordoned off the neighborhood.
The Nova Scotia resident had just attended a community celebration at a local park when she received the first emergency alert about the wildfires on Sunday.
Tarateski is currently staying with family at a hotel in Halifax and says she doesn’t know when she will be able to return home.
Her home in the Tantallon area, a community in the western end of Halifax Regional Municipality, has disappeared. Her pets, a dog and a cat, remain missing.
“I just couldn’t handle the thought of them being inside, so I chose to believe they were somehow outside,” Tarateski told CTV’s Your Morning on Wednesday.
The ongoing wildfires in Nova Scotia have burned out thousands of hectares across the county, killing an estimated 200 homes and buildings in the Halifax area.
Tuesday morning, the Nova Scotia SPCA (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) said it more than 100 animals under her care.
The organization says it is in the evacuation zone and is working with the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources to care for animals and reunite them with their families.
Kelly Laurin was driving her fiancé back to her home in Tantallon when they saw smoke coming from behind a local community center.
After getting an evacuation notice, they packed their belongings and cats into their car.
At one point, Laurin says, they could see the trees burning in their backyard.
“Honestly, I was in shock, I was terrified,” she told CTV’s Your Morning on Wednesday.
“I thought our house was going to collapse, I thought the whole street was going to collapse. I didn’t really know what to think, except I had to get out of there as soon as possible.”
Laurin says a neighbor managed to snap a photo of her house, which showed it still standing, but with some fire damage.
She considers herself “exceedingly lucky,” mainly because there were a number of sentimental items she couldn’t or forgot to bring, including photographs and her father’s urn.
“It was just leaving or being in the fire,” she said.
Mary Wolfe, who is in a hotel with her family and dog, says that while she could not see a fire at the time, a neighbor advised her to leave because of the developing situation.
It wasn’t until she got stuck in traffic trying to get out of her subdivision that the evacuation order came through.
Soon, she says, ash started falling on the cars and that’s when it got real for her.
“It looks like a really hot, hazy summer day,” she told CTV’s Your Morning on Tuesday.
“There’s smoke in the air everywhere and it stinks, but we’re about 10 kilometers from our house, so we’re about 20 kilometers from the start of the fire. So it’s not as intense as at home, but you I’m sure something is going on.”
Wolfe says she found out her street is safe through group chats and her neighbors’ security cameras.
“We were closer than we would have liked,” she said. “We don’t know when we’ll go back in. We are still fully in the evacuation zone.’
The Nova Scotia SPCA has had more than 100 evacuated animals in shelter since Tuesday morning and is making room to help more. With the Department of National Resources, we are within the evacuation zone and provide care and family reunification.
— Nova Scotia SPCA (@NSSPCA) May 30, 2023
