‘You could feel the heat on the back of your neck’: Global News reporter on Fort McMurray wildfire

Global Edmonton reporter Fletcher Kent spent the last five days in a disaster area most people were forced to flee.

While covering the Fort McMurray wildfire situation, the Global News crews were often forced out by fast-moving flames that jumped the highway or by officials who told them it simply wasn’t safe to stay where they were any longer.

READ MORE: Fort McMurray wildfire: Fire grows to 85,000 hectares, thousands in camps airlifted to safety 

“You’re fleeing, you’re getting out on the roads with everybody else,” Kent explained. “You’re staying as long as you can to tell those stories, but later on you realize, you’ve left everything behind.”

After the hotel they were staying in was evacuated, a Fort McMurray resident in a neighbourhood that wasn’t under an evacuation order offered the Global News crew a place to sleep.

“This is a testament to Fort McMurray,” Kent said.

“There were four of us who just sort of crashed where we could… For about three hours before we had to be up again.”

READ MORE: Fort McMurray wildfire: resident in convoy through community calls scene ‘very Apocalyptic’ 

They stayed in work camps and bounced around, leaving clothes and glasses behind, as they continued to provide people with updates on the fire.

“We started doing that one report there and the flames were coming up over the trees and they started coming down,” referencing Wednesday, when the fire swarmed Highway 63.

“We shut off the cameras, said to Cam, my photographer, ‘okay, we’ve got to get out of here.’

“We’re tearing down… Trying to fit everything in the truck as quickly as possible, tearing down the tripod,” Kent recalled.

“You could just feel the heat on the back of your neck, you could hear the roar of the fire. It’s something you’ve never heard before. You turn around and look back at that fire and it’s probably halfway or three-quarters of the way down the hill, farther than it was even when we shut the camera off. It’s incredible how fast it was moving.”

Watch below: Aerial footage shows the devastation in Fort McMurray’s Abasand and Beacon Hill neighbourhoods