Latest news with #rebuilding
CTV News
3 hours ago
- General
- CTV News
‘It doesn't get back your history': Denare Beach rebuilding after devastating wildfire
WATCH: The mayor of Denare Beach says the long road to rebuilding has begun, but first the burned debris needs to be dealt with properly. Hundreds of Denare Beach residents are tired, frustrated and devastated by the ordeal of the last month. This week, locals returned to the place where their homes once stood. And while the road to rebuilding is long and arduous, residents say they feel much better now that they're back home. Some residents have called Denare Beach home for decades. '1948, my dad was a commercial fisherman and trapper up around Reindeer Lake,' said Gerry Angell, who says only seven families lived in the community when he first moved. 'I became school-aged, so they moved down here, and I've been here since 1948, that's 77 years.' While Angell says his home was spared, he's heard too many stories of neighbours returning to find piles of rubble. 'It's just sad, it's heartbreaking,' said Angell. 'I was just talking to a friend of mine who lost his wife to cancer a few months ago, and now he lost his home and he lost all his memories and pictures and everything else. It's devastating.' Gerry Angell Gerry Angell, Denare Beach resident since 1948, when the community had just seven families. (John Flatters/CTV News) In spite of all the destruction, the first thing on everyone's mind was the safety of those who stayed behind to try and save the community. 'We got all of our guys out of here, and that was definitely the priority of everybody,' said Jen Hysert, who lost her home to the fire. 'And to see a community lose 300 of 413 houses and every single person here saying that was the most important thing to us that our guys were safe. I don't know what it's like in a bigger centre, but we knew all of them, and they were either a friend or a relative or a neighbour or a friend of a friend.' While the damage was hard to comprehend, locals say returning home was a weight off their shoulders. 'This is what is left of my home,' said Hysert. 'And yet this feels better being here than the lost, sick feeling you were left with, with no supports for a month, living outside of here.' 'I equate it to like having a wake,' said Kari Lentowicz, who also lost her home in the fire. 'I always need that closure, and when I go to a wake, you get to see the person who's passed. And it gives you an opportunity to make it real and then move forward and grieve.' Kari Lentowicz Denare Beach resident Kari Lentowicz stands outside the site of her home destroyed in the wildfire. (John Flatters/CTV News) Lentowicz says finding a little peace on her dock was the best thing she could do when she returned home. 'I got out of the truck and heard the loons calling,' she said. 'Made my way down to the dock eventually and just looked out. And the reason I'm here is still here. The reason I settled here is absolutely, 100 per cent here.' Now the mayor of Denare Beach says the long road to rebuilding has begun. But it's going to take time for the burned debris to be dealt with properly. 'That comes with rules,' said Carl Lentowicz, mayor of Denare Beach. 'And like a lot of stuff, nobody's ever handled that before in that capacity. So there's going to be a learning curve. As far as what I see personally is there are many venues of damage and concern to be dealt with, and each one has a myriad of things that you have to do.' Denare Beach (John Flatters/CTV News) And once the wreckage is dealt with, the process of dealing with insurance begins. But residents like Lentowicz say that won't do much to replace the things you can't replace. 'Insurance does not pay for your sense of security,' she said. 'It doesn't buy back your traditional practices. It doesn't buy back all the things that you grew up with. The memories, the photos, those are priceless. Insurance is there, yeah, to help us build another house. But it doesn't get back your history.' But in spite of the mounting challenge of rebuilding, residents are confident in their ability to get back to normal. 'We had a real good thing going here, still do,' said Angell. 'But that has to be rebuilt.' 'Our little village will do what it does best to come together, support each other and rebuild together,' said mayor Lentowicz. 'We're all in this together.'
CTV News
13 hours ago
- General
- CTV News
Denare Beach rebuilding after devastating wildfire
Watch WATCH: The mayor of Denare Beach says the long road to rebuilding has begun, but first the burned debris needs to be dealt with properly.
Arab News
2 days ago
- Politics
- Arab News
Syrian architect uses drone footage to help rebuild hometown
TAL MARDIKH, Syria: Syrian architect Abdel Aziz Al-Mohammed could barely recognize his war-ravaged village when he returned after years away. Now, his meticulous documentation of the damage, taken using a drone, helps to facilitate its rebuilding. 'When I first came back, I was shocked by the extent of the destruction,' said Mohammed, 34. Walking through his devastated village of Tal Mardikh, in Syria's northwestern Idlib province, he said he could not recognize 'anything, I couldn't even find my parents' home.' Nearly half of Tal Mardikh's 1,500 homes have been destroyed and the rest damaged, mainly due to bombardment by the former Syrian army. Mohammed, who in 2019 fled the bombardment to near the Turkish border, first returned days after a militant offensive toppled longtime ruler Bashar Assad in December. The architect, now based in Idlib city, had documented the details of Tal Mardikh's houses and streets before fleeing and later used his drone to document the destruction. When he returned, he spent two weeks surveying the area, visiting homes, and creating an interactive map that detailed the conditions of each house. 'We entered homes in fear, not knowing what was inside, as the regime controlled the area for five years,' he said. Under the blazing sun, Mohammed watched as workers restored a house in Tal Mardikh, which adjoins the archeological site of Ebla, the seat of one of the Syrian Arab Republic's earliest kingdoms. His documentation of the village helped gain support from Shafak, a nongovernmental organization which agreed to fund the reconstruction and rehabilitation of 434 out of 800 damaged homes in Tal Mardikh. The work is expected to be completed in August and includes the restoration of two wells and sanitation networks, at a cost exceeding $1 million.
CTV News
3 days ago
- General
- CTV News
B.C.'s Lytton First Nation still rebuilding in more ways than one, four years after wildfire
New houses being built to replace the ones destroyed by the 2021 wildfire are seen at the Lytton First Nation, in Lytton, B.C., on June 25, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck For many members of the Indigenous community that was displaced after a wildfire tore through Lytton in the summer of 2021, the process of rebuilding and returning home is one with a difficult, dual nature. Alongside the B.C. village itself, multiple Lytton First Nation reserve lands – there are over 50 in the area – were ravaged by flames. The fire incinerated the ancestral land, uprooting the community and displacing hundreds of residents. Troy MacBeth Abromaitis, a member of the Nlaka'pamux Nation and Lytton First Nation who has been leading the rebuild process, says the fire was a double-blow for many of the residents. A large portion are all too familiar with the feeling of being torn from their home and their loved ones. Abromaitis says a substantial number of members from the Indigenous communities in and around that area would have been victims of either the residential school system or the '60s Scoop, a colonial practice that took place between the late 1950s and the early 1980s that saw swathes of Indigenous children removed from their families and placed into non-Indigenous homes or institutions. As a victim of the '60s Scoop himself, Abromaitis has been spearheading the reconnection process on all fronts in recent years. This June 30 not only marks four years since the devastating fire swept through the community, but also this year's iteration of Indigenous Survivor's Day, a day established by Abromaitis in 2023 to honour and uphold the survivors and call for better support. He began advocating for the day in 2023 to honour and support the Indigenous survivors after realizing, a few years into his own reconnection journey, that there was little help for those who needed it. By 2024, various municipalities across B.C. began to observe the date, now also known as National Blanket Ceremony Day, and it has since been taken up by provinces across the country. The work to establish Indigenous Survivor's Day coincided with the rebuild of the scorched reserve lands, with Abromaitis throwing himself into fundraising mode in the months after the blaze, raising the money needed to support the community with food and shelter. The Lytton First Nation has since teamed up with a modular housing supplier to provide temporary solutions to bring the displaced families home, with 39 homes, a community centre and a band office built thus far. Abromaitis, who only reconnected with his own First Nations roots six years ago when he was aged 35, 30 years after his separation, says he hopes to lean on his own experience to help the community reintegrate. Abromaitis says he finds it difficult to put into words how important it was to him that he was able to feel 'welcome, and part of the community,' when he returned, and he hopes to show the residents returning in the wake of the fire similar levels of warmth and support. 'I think that experience has given me the ability to better relate to the members of the community who are displaced. I know how to be extra sensitive, extra cautious and extra loving,' he says. The community is making progress and is about '75 per cent of the way' towards reaching what it had been prior to the blaze, says Abromaitis. The reserve land rebuild project is progressing quicker than that of the village itself, which in comparison is around '30 to 40 per cent' through its recovery phase, he adds. 'It took many helping hands to bring the community back to where it is right now,' says Abromaitis. 'I'm grateful to be one of those helping hands, to have moved the rebuild and recovery forward to where it is now. It helped bring me closer to community, and to my family.'
BBC News
3 days ago
- Business
- BBC News
Rumour Bilston Outdoor Market site is for sale 'is nonsense'
Rumours the former site of an outdoor market site has been sold "are complete nonsense", a council has news comes after Bilston Market traders were moved to another area of town last year to make way for the £5.2m rebuilding of the market on the site by City of Wolverhampton have been raised because traders say there has been no visible progress made since January with one, John Dawkins, saying there were rumours a supermarket chain and a property developer were set to buy the Bhupinder Gakhal, council portfolio holder for resident services, said there had been no activity since March because a detailed design and delivery plan was being drawn up. Mr Dawkins has asked whether "it is still on course to be completed in October", but Gakhal has not provided confirmation the market would be ready to reopen that month. "The council's £5.2m investment in Bilston Outdoor Market is a major redevelopment programme that will see huge improvements for both traders and visitors," said Gakhal."Rumours of the site being sold are complete nonsense – and I wrote to every single trader this week to tell them so." The rebuild project has been financed through the government's Towns Fund said that "enabling works, site and ground surveys" were completed in March" and survey results were being used to create design and delivery plans. "The final timetable and programme of works are due shortly from the contractor and we have told traders they will be the first to know when we have that information," he said. 'No work for months' Traders became concerned when site notices and construction equipment was taken the outdoor markets was knocked down, "the last time there was movement was back in January", Mr Dawkins said."We've approached market officers, they say everything's on track but nothing's happening," he explained. "It's supposed to be complete in October but there hasn't been any work for months."He and other traders said they wanted reassurance about the market's Dawkins added that people wanted to know when and if traders were going to be moved back and "why nothing has happened on the site". This news was gathered by the Local Democracy Reporting Service which covers councils and other public service organisations. Follow BBC Wolverhampton & Black Country on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
