‘I looked at the sky, something didn’t feel right. Then my buddy messaged: “I see open flame”’ – This is climate breakdown

• Location: Jasper, Canada

• Disaster: Wildfire, 2024

Darcy Ruddy is the owner-operator of an excavation company in western Canada. Just before a wildfire swept through parts of his home town, Jasper, he was finishing work at a nearby luxury heliskiing lodge. Climate change made the higher temperatures the week before the fire and the day it ignited more likely.

I’d landed this big job at a heliskiing lodge in Valemount. I finished 95% and was excited because I was going on this mountain biking trip in the Chilcotins [mountain range]. I was like: “I’m just going to leave the machines here. I’ll go home tonight, grab my camper van, and I’ll move them when I get back.” Had I not done that, I would have lost everything.

As I was driving back into town, there was this intense warm air. It was nice out, but it was stormy. I made a joke that morning: “Big lightning come to town tonight? About time Jasper burns.” Didn’t expect it to happen but, as I drove into town, I looked at my gas gauge and I was like: “I better go fill this thing up.”

At home, I pulled my van into the back. I was looking at the sky and enjoying a leftover gin and tonic. I was like: “Something doesn’t feel right.” My buddy Alex messaged me: “There was a lightning strike out here. I see open flame.” I turned on my radio and my buddy, who works for parks, was evacuating a campground. I could hear the intensity in his voice. Holy fuck, this is it.

I called my dad. He was out for dinner with a friend. I was like: “Dad, pay for dinner, get the hell out of there. We got to start packing.” I ran back into my house and started grabbing things. I got lucky because I had packed all my stuff for that mountain biking trip and it was sitting by the door.

We started getting the alerts. I jumped in my work truck, burning around helping my family. Then I went to my dad’s house. I’m helping him strap his trailer on a truck someone loaned us. I was telling my dad: “Get in the gridlock. I’m going to get in it too.” It was bumper to bumper all the way to Valemount. It was really dark at that point. There was ash starting to sprinkle down. A storm rolled in and there was lightning at Mount Robson. Jesus, it was intense.

The heliskiing lodge manager called me: “You bring all your family.” It’s got 20 rooms. Not many people knew how to get to the lodge. I was up all night finding my aunts and cousins on the highway. Landing my grandmother at 3am in a CMH bed and telling her that there’s a chef for her to cook in the morning was pretty special. I slept in my van out near the road waiting for my dad. I could see how tired he was when I was helping him put the trailer on. He got 30 minutes out of town and, being an old railroader, pulled over to sleep it off.

The next day my family was like: “You could sit here and hold our hand and cry with us, or you could go enjoy the trip you paid for with your friends.” I left early the next day to the Chilcotins. On the way, I had gotten a picture of the Wicked Cup on fire. Fuck, it’s actually happening. I pulled over at the end of Carpenter Lake. It was sunny and beautiful. I sat on the beach, grabbed a beer out of the cooler, and started crying.

That night, Jasper burnt down. But there was no confirmation. Eight of us were sitting on the dock on this little lake, going over photos that leaked online. There was one of the church on fire. My dad’s house is 200 metres away, burning. His house was 200 metres away from mine. So my house is gone.

The next day we tried to enjoy our day and go mountain biking. All of us weren’t thinking correctly, for good reason, and brought only summer clothes. We hit some weather on the top of one of the passes. My house burnt to the ground, but I’m freezing my ass off. At the end of the ride, all our phones lit up because of the news and photos. It was like bang, bang, bang. I remember we were going to do a bunch of biking after that. I felt like I was going to faint if I got my heart rate up. I was like: “Hey guys, I can’t focus on the mountain bike. I’m going to go over the handlebars.”

After the bike trip, I got a call from the municipality. I made a joke: “I bet you don’t need me to do that retaining wall now, eh?” He’s like: “We have to get the pharmacy open, a gas station open, the hospital open, the grocery store open, and fences all around the danger sites in town.” I had a job to do. I’m going back to fix Jasper.

Pulling into town with my excavator, they had police blockades. I thought I was going to have to show them a card, but the guy was like: “Open the gate. Let him in.” Driving through, the town was smouldering. The airfield had just lit on fire. It was all charred black grass that was smoking. The fire was still happening up in the distance. All the municipal guys were standing there with vac trucks, waiting for me to start digging.

When the fire came through, I was like: “OK there’s going to be some damage.” I didn’t think rows upon rows upon rows was completely gone. The log home my dad built with my mom, also burnt. The fire took out my cousin Adrian’s garage and my brother’s shop. My grandpa’s house, now my aunt’s house, burnt to the ground. That was my cousin’s inheritance.

Standing in the ashes, the smell was way different than burnt forest. You’re around burnt chemicals, burnt house, or burnt car. You’d go down alleyways and there would be little streams of aluminum coming from cars because the radiator melted and turned into liquid. I remember this house had one of those aluminum roofs. It had gotten so hot that it turned into rain, dripping all over the back yard.

I asked: “Where do you want me to go?” The lowbed driver was like: “Go to Grandma and Grandpa Don’s old house, the back alleyway.” I was like: “You jerk. That’s my next-door neighbour. You’re sending me to my house first?”

I go to my house. It was weird seeing things of mine melted and laying on the ground. My great-grandfather had this beautiful old rifle that had been all over the park. You can’t even make bullets for it any more. When I was young, I asked my grandfather: “Can I take that rifle? Maybe we’ll shoot it one day.” I had it up on the shelf locked up in a case. It was laying there, right on the surface, all distorted.

I started demoing and cleaning up Jasper as best I could: driving excavators all over the place, loading up ashes, and pushing them around. I had a lot of pride in fixing town and making sure things were done right because I could sense the vultures trying to swoop in. I think there’s people that made a lot of money on this fire that have never even stepped foot in Jasper.

There was even tour buses. People were going to be coming to Jasper to look at bears, now they’re just coming to look at the disaster. Some 60-year-old couple’s in tears as people pick through their ashes looking for the wedding ring. Then a tourist walks up and says: “Hey, what’s going on here? How do you feel right now about this?” Some people were really rude about it. Like: “Go home, dude.” Others were kind.

There was a lot of up in the air. Every day I got up, it was: “What’s the next step?” My friend Pete came to me and was like: “I want you to clear my lot.” He lost his kids in their 20s. Jason was in a driving accident. He was like a brother to me. Calla was two years younger than us. She was at that country show in Vegas and got shot by that dude. Pete’s like: “I want you to go slow and search for Calla’s urn.”

My buddy Greg, who’s working for me, grew up with Calla as well. I was like: “We’re looking for a box this big. Calla had a deer on her urn.” I could see her face when I was searching for her. I remember a photo album popped out of the ground, open to a picture of me and Jason at a toga party. I don’t do much spiritual stuff, but Jason was with me.

Then, Greg was like: “What’s that?” I walked over and there was a little porcelain black box covered in dirt. I picked it up and swiped it off, and there was the deer. Holy shit. She was under a metre and a half of broken concrete and rubble. We found her with an excavator bucket, 100% intact. I called Pete and he came down. I gave Calla to Pete, and he was like: “Intact?” I was like: “Fucking intact.”

On top of learning how to help homeowners, how to do the demos, and how to please Parks Canada, I was also trying to get temporary housing. When I first got to town I was living in my van on the street. A guy that I work with felt bad for me. They shut down their bed and breakfast for the rest of the year, and I moved in for the winter. But, at the end of spring they needed to open up their bed and breakfast.

I moved into my brother’s basement for another month and a half. Then I bought RVs and took my excavator to a friend’s property. I call it my compound. I hold this septic installation ticket [licence] – probably the only one in 200km – and they’re calling me: “Hey can you sign off on above ground tanks at these staff accommodation camps.” I was like: “I’m working so fricking hard cleaning up I think I deserve one of these 25 temporary housings.” They offered me a dorm room, a 38-years-old. I said: “No”. It was almost a year and a half that I didn’t have a full kitchen. I hate eating out now because I did so much of it.

A month and a half or two after people were back, I was invited to a back yard barbecue. It was a friend’s birthday. I walked past my dad’s house and I broke down. I’ve seen my dad’s house 100 times, but I exploded. I stood in the back alleyway for an hour trying to stop crying and I just couldn’t. I had to go home, go to bed. I’m not afraid to cry or anything but I felt like, being a construction guy, I’m a little tougher. I cried after the fire many, many times, but never where I stopped operating. Never that hard.

It feels like the fire might change Jasper’s unique mom-and-pop feel. Growing up here, all the businesses, restaurants, the movie theatre, the hotels, were owned and operated by local families. There’s still a bit of it, but there’s all these big corporations swooping in and buying things up. You had grown up here in character homes. Now, all the houses are going to be from this one era. They’re all going to be green and grey.

It’s changed the community, not only by its appearance. One day, it got really hot out and windy – the fire activity picked up again. One friend just bolted. I’d never seen him so rattled before. That valley didn’t burn and still sits out there with all the dead trees. That’s a lot of anxiety for people. We’re rebuilding this place to potentially burn again.

If I could say anything to you: have an evening with your partner one night and talk about what you would do, which direction you would go, the things you would take, the things you would leave. Get good insurance, and read your insurance, and understand it. Have a few different gameplans. Because I’ll tell you what, I would way rather return to a new house and be able to put your painting back up on the wall than just be like: “No, it’s not actually going to happen.” I joked for 15 years of my life about my home town burning down and then it actually did.

• This is climate breakdown was put together in collaboration with the Climate Disaster Project at University of Victoria, Canada. Read more.