Opinion: We survived the fire. Who will help us survive the recovery?

I said that on a national TV panel of wildfire experts last year. It seemed to shock the moderator. It shouldn’t have.

You can’t fight an inferno with a garden hose. If you’re told to evacuate, go — for yourself and for the first responders who will risk their lives to go back for you.

Here’s the thing — ordinary Canadians are good at saving ourselves. Albertans have proven it twice.

Ten years ago in Fort McMurray, 90,000 of us evacuated in long, orderly, terrified lines. Neighbours, co-workers and total strangers worked together so no one got left behind. We did our duty as Canadians, kept an eye out for people stranded on the roadside and made our way through smoke so thick it felt like night.

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That meant first responders could focus on the infrastructure we needed for our escape. They fought back the walls of flame threatening roads and bridges. They stood on crowded streets to direct traffic. They protected the hospital until every patient was safely away. They shielded the treatment plant pumping pressurized water to city hydrants. They kept it up even after the fire veered toward the Emergency Operations Centre and everyone co-ordinating the response had to be evacuated.

Eight years later, Jasper did the same thing. Twenty-five thousand people got themselves out ahead of a fire that destroyed almost a third of the town. Now, government officials in British Columbia are thanking people from every walk of life for “putting themselves at risk to save others.”

If you lose your home, as I did, you come back proud of your community and grateful no one was killed. You also come back exhausted to an expensive hole in the ground filled with ashes and fire-retardant spray.

You come back to a mess of such enormity that your community needs months, if not years, of help.

You’ll spend the next two years figuring out how to replace your home and everything you own, because that’s roughly how long it takes to settle an insurance claim after a major disaster. You deal with insurance adjusters, contractors, government officials and permit offices.

You replace everything from teaspoons to refrigerators to children’s pyjamas, too.

A year after Jasper burned, only 15 per cent of destroyed properties had rebuild permits. In Fort McMurray, a decade on, there are still empty lots where someone couldn’t make it through the red tape and crippling expense.

The federal government must step up. We need a national wildfire recovery fund that pays out immediately instead of the current reimbursement model that only pays municipalities after they’ve spent the money. The hundreds of displaced families trying to navigate a desperately overburdened system deserve an immediate boost to local resources.