THE AFTERMATH | CLEANING UP

• • Cleaning Up
  • Coming Home
  • The Social Impact
• • The Royal Tour
  • Summer Flooding
  • Charlie's Story
• • Facts & Figures

"At the landfill we received the equivalent of four months' worth of waste in the space of five days – and this is after we diverted 75 per cent of the materials to metal."

Initially, the process of cleaning up, restoring infrastructure and putting communities back together was as monumental as battling the wildfires themselves. Waste and recycling demands – both from the destruction that occurred and the reconstruction that soon followed – had a significant impact on the municipal landfill. Even homes untouched by the fire itself had refrigerators and deep freezes that had sat for two weeks without power. Multiplied by more than seven thousand households, disposal of Freon and food waste alone was a massive chore.

On a given day, the regional landfill employs three people. In the weeks following the disaster, there were thirty people on site working twelve hour shifts. The landfill's cell – an area where solid waste is stored – had roughly three years left before a new one was needed. Crews are now scrambling to make a new cell to accommodate additional demand. According to Tom Moore, landfill manager for the Lesser Slave Lake Regional Waste Management Services Commission, "Most of what's in the cell now is ash removed from foundations. We've tried to recycle as much as we could, but we've been dealing with a lot of ash that was hauled in from everywhere."

Much work is left to be done before the municipality and the communities within it are restored. But just months after disaster struck, progress has been remarkable. In the affected areas of Lesser Slave River, is still evident that a significant natural disaster took place. But equally evident are a general sense of order and cleanliness, and the great strides people have made to recover.