Oilsands camp chef cooks up 3,000 meals a day for workers, fire evacuees
‘We just emptied our fridges and kept cooking’
Tuesday was like every other day in the kitchen for oilfield camp chef Sukant Dakua, until the Fort McMurray fire turned things upside down.
Under an evacuation order with nowhere to go, hundreds of people suddenly showed up at the CIVEO McLelland Lake Lodge camp.
"It never ended and we just emptied our fridges and kept cooking and kept going all day," said Dakua, a camp chef with the company CIVEO.
Dakua described the next few days as chaos, while he and his team worked around the clock, pulling off nearly 3,000 meals a day feeding the evacuees.
'You don't know what to do'
"No one was prepared, so you don't know what to do," Dakua said.
After the initial confusion, things began to fall into place as evacuees and employees got into a rhythm with everyone including management pitching in, he said.
"People did things they don't normally do like dishes and cleaning the floor, taking water to the people who were lined up outside the door trying to get into the lodge.
"It was pretty impressive to see people coming together from all walks of life," he said.
And while people were patient and worked together to make it through, Dakua said he was forced to take special precautions to make sure supplies lasted.
'We just made it happen'
"We kind of shut down a lot of the water lines and stuff just to make sure we have enough in case things go longer, but we just made it happen and people were happy," he said.
With the Fort McMurray airport closed because of the fires, Dakua and his kitchen team flew out of the aerodrome at the Suncor Firebag operation Friday morning.
Jackie Ethier was there to welcome people in arrivals.
She was holding up a handwritten sign offering her home to those with nowhere to go.
"I came to offer anyone a place to stay. Our basement, we don't have a lot of room but we can fit as many as we can and we'll cook and make it a safe place and I have a minivan so we can haul up to seven people where ever they need to go," she said.
Edmonton Transit buses were lined up outside the arrival doors to welcome evacuees and drive them to the temporary reception centre at Northlands Expo.
Relieved to be going home
Dakua was relieved to be away from the danger zone, but only part way home with the final leg of his journey to Calgary where his wife and children are waiting, still to come.
The timing was special with it being Mother's Day this weekend, he said.
"My family, they will be excited. My two little kids, they are waiting every day.
"'What's going on Dad?' when are you back, so it will be pretty nice to be back home."