When evacuation was ordered, Fort McMurray principal fled
with busload of students
JANET FRENCH
Published
on: May 5, 2016
Edmonton
Journal
In her 28 years of teaching, Lisa Hilsenteger
dutifully practised fire drills and mock school lockdowns.
But there was no rehearsal for
commandeering a bus full of her young students through a burning city.
“There’s nothing more terrifying than
to be in a crisis and not have your children with you,” said Hilsenteger, now
out of harm’s way in Athabasca.
As a wildfire encroached on Fort
McMurray Tuesday afternoon, Hilsenteger, the principal of Father Turcotte
Elementary School, greeted busloads of children arriving from three evacuated
Catholic schools in the city. Most families picked their children up from their
school, or from Father Turcotte, but when downtown Fort McMurray was evacuated
at 4 p.m., 15 children remained.
She tacked a note to the school’s front
door with her name and cellphone number, telling parents she and some staff
were taking the children to Timberlea High School. Usually a 10-minute drive,
the trip through the gridlocked traffic took 90 minutes.
Some relieved parents met their children
there. Twelve children’s parents did not. Then the mayor ordered the mandatory
evacuation of the city.
By then, the bus was attracting
stragglers along with staff. A family of four whose vehicle had run out of gas
got on board. With no other way out, two women with suitcases and two
restaurant workers also boarded.
With a handful of granola bars and
oranges, a flat of bottled water, and bus driver Wendy Johnson at the wheel,
the bus travelled north, as emergency officials instructed.
By now, worried parents were dialing
Hilsenteger’s number, wondering how to meet up with their children. After
putting their kids on the phone so parents could hear they were OK, Hilsenteger
told parents to drive north and look for the school bus snarled in traffic. Six
smiling children were picked up by their parents or family friends.
With Suncor’s Noralta lodge north of
Fort McMurray now full, the bus kept going to a work camp at Syncrude. The
50-kilometre drive took 6½ hours.
“We had all these children. (Some) of
my children were very special needs. They never complained. They never cried.
They never asked for food. They never asked for water,” Hilsenteger said,
crying.
After eating dinner at the camp and
settling into rooms for some sleep, Hilsenteger was uneasy. The camp had been
shut and wasn’t fully stocked to accommodate potentially thousands of people
streaming in. Brown water was coming out of the taps. There were no blankets or
pillows.
“We knew that we could be there for
days. We thought, ‘How are they going to sustain us without food or water?’ “
It was 2 a.m. when the exhausted adults
decided to wake the children and put them back on the bus. They headed south.
Hilsenteger’s goal was to get to the other side of Fort McMurray. She had no
plan where they would go next.
By now, traffic was moving. Staff
celebrated when they saw the hospital and schools still standing, she said.
Johnson patiently navigated the yellow bus through the blackness.
After dropping off eight more people to
meet family and friends south of Fort McMurray at the Nexen plant, four
children were still on board, their parents unreachable. They moved on.
“We knew even if we ran out of diesel,
we were safe. We had a bus to sleep on. We had water,” Hilsenteger said.
One of the children was picked up in
Wandering River by a family friend who showed her identification and produced a
phone number.
“At this point I’m starting to
hesitate. Who am I giving this student to?” said Hilsenteger, who began to
question how strictly school policies apply during extreme circumstances. “You
feel like you’re breaking the rule.”
Three children remained, all siblings.
It was 10:30 a.m. by the time she
rolled up to her father’s house in Athabasca with a school bus full of unlikely
guests.
Johnson had driven for 15 hours without
complaint. Not one child asked, “Are we there yet?”
One basketball-clutching student’s main
concern was catching up with the outcomes of several NBA games. The father of
the three is a bus driver who had been stuck in the traffic jam.
The family had a tearful reunion in
Athabasca by 3 p.m. Wednesday, the principal said, where the children told the
mom and dad about all the fire and smoke they had seen.
