Nova ScotiaRuth Manuel says she wants to return home to West Dalhousie after the home she shared with her son and his partner was destroyed in the Long Lake wildfire. The fire razed 20 homes and 11 outbuildings.Lifelong West Dalhousie resident Ruth Manuel lost her home, built by her late husband, in AugustJane Sponagle · CBC News · Posted: Dec 02, 2025 5:00 AM EST | Last Updated: 2 hours agoListen to this articleEstimated 4 minutesThe audio version of this article is generated by text-to-speech, a technology based on artificial intelligence.Norman Manuel, 61, and his mother Ruth Manuel, 94, hope to return to West Dalhousie. (Jane Sponagle/CBC)It’s been more than two months since roughly a thousand residents of the West Dalhousie, N.S., area went home after being evacuated due to the Long Lake wildfire.Ruth Manuel wasn’t one of them.“I’ve got no home now to go to,” the 94-year-old said in an interview with CBC News.Her son Norman Manuel is doing his best to change that.The Annapolis County wildfire, which was sparked by a lightning strike on Aug. 13 and has yet to be completely extinguished, burned an estimated 8,468 hectares and destroyed 20 homes and 11 outbuildings.Among them was the house Ruth’s late husband built for them over 70 years ago in West Dalhousie, adding rooms to it as their family grew.Ruth and Norman Manuel’s West Dalhousie home before the Long Lake wildfire. (Google Streetview)Ruth, her son and his girlfriend lived together at the house.On the day the fire started, Norman, 61, was watering the garden when it suddenly began raining. He said he remembers hearing thunder and seeing a flash of lightning.“So it wasn’t too long after that we got a phone call saying that there’s a fire up the road,” he said.The evacuation order came the next day. They were told they had 15 minutes to get out.Firefighters from across Nova Scotia and Canada worked for weeks to contain the fire and save structures, making it one of the largest firefighting efforts in the province’s history. At one point, about 500 civic addresses were evacuated.But on Aug. 24, when a Department of Natural Resources official summed up extreme conditions by saying “everything in fire behaviour you don’t want happening is happening today,” their home was one of 20 consumed by the raging wildfire.All that was left of Ruth and Norman Manuel’s home after the Long Lake wildfire. (Jane Sponagle/CBC)Norman said his mom lost her hearing aids, wedding rings, and family photos and memorabilia.Officials took Norman to see the property after they got the news the house was gone. “I just felt like falling to my knees because it’s devastating thinking of all the stuff that I lost,” he said.On top of that, he said, it was “heartbreaking” to lose the home his dad had built. The house was not insured.‘It was home’Now Norman is trying to scrape together enough money to start over in West Dalhousie and get his mother back to the community where she was born and raised. “I liked it out there. It was home,” Ruth said.Since the wildfire, she has been in and out of hospital with health issues. When she is not in hospital, she is staying with Norman at his girlfriend’s father’s house. But Norman said it’s not a long-term solution.“I’d like to have her home by Christmas, but that ain’t going to happen, I don’t think. Not the way things are going.”He said he’s told the wait for housing in Bridgetown or Middleton could be a year or two and while he might be able to find a place to rent, he would rather spend the money on his own place in the countryside where he can have a garden and go fishing.Norman said he’s been looking for a mobile home to move onto the property, now that it’s been cleaned up, but he has a limited budget. The mobile homes he has seen are out of his price range and would still need work. Norman said he has his Canada Pension Plan disability benefit, money from the province’s emergency financial support program for fire evacuees and $1,700 from scrap metal he salvaged from the rubble. He hopes to receive additional support from the donation program set up through the West Dalhousie Community Hall. “He’s trying to get me home. Trying to get me back to the same place if I want to go,” said Ruth. “Wherever we go, as long as I’m with him, I’ll be happy.”The Long Lake fire has been categorized as under control since Sept. 27, a week after the last of the evacuees were allowed to return home.A natural resources spokesperson said Monday that the fire “could still be smouldering in some spots underground and could pop up again if it gets hot and dry for an extended period.”MORE TOP STORIESABOUT THE AUTHORJane Sponagle is a journalist with CBC in Halifax. She previously reported from the Yukon, Nunavut and the Northwest Territories for over a decade. You can email story ideas to her at jane.sponagle@cbc.ca.
94-year-old woman still homeless after Long Lake wildfire
