For more than four weeks, 28 Flin Flon firefighters battled to save their northern Manitoba city from this season’s wildfires, doing gruelling shifts in heavy smoke without days off.In the end — although some cabins and homes outside the city burned down and the nearby community of Denare Beach, Sask., was devastated — Flin Flon still stood after being encircled by flames. Some called it a miracle.”It’s something that weighs heavy on me yet but will never be forgotten,” firefighter James Dauk said last week.The hardest days came early, he said, as he said goodbye to his children and girlfriend when the city of roughly 5,000, about 630 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg, fell under a mandatory evacuation order on May 28.Firefighter James Dauk says the hardest days of the 2025 wildfire season were saying goodbye to his children and girlfriend when Flin Flon issued a mandatory evacuation order. (Travis Golby/CBC)That day, as Flin Flonners fled in bumper-to-bumper traffic, volunteer crews of municipal structural firefighters were gearing up for one of their most important fights, fire Chief Jason Kuras told CBC.A fast-moving blaze first detected two days earlier had jumped the Manitoba-Saskatchewan border, grazing the outskirts of the city and sweping north on the west side of Cliff Lake through tinder-dry forests.Kuras feared if the wildfire curved around the lake, strong winds would push it south and raze the north part of Flin Flon. “We decided that this is our best chance to save a good portion of the city,” Kuras said, pointing on a map in his office at a bottleneck of land between Cliff Lake and Embury Lake, known locally as Trout Lake.An aerial photo of a bottleneck between Cliff Lake, left, and Trout Lake northeast of Flin Flon, where crews stopped a wildfire from travelling south into Flin Flon. (Submitted by Darren Romo)Capt. Darren Romo said in one of their earliest successes, crews held the line there. Alongside firefighters from Opaskwayak Cree Nation, Swan Valley and The Pas, they stopped the wildfire in its tracks, but not without doing exhausting shifts up to 28 hours long.Over a 10-day period there, firefighters communicated through radios and lugged hose packs through thick bush and up rock faces, taking only lunch breaks and rare fire hall naps.”I’ve dealt with fires like this in the past, but nothing to this scale,” said Romo, who has volunteered with the department for 21 years.Then on May 30, the wildfire began tearing down the east side of Trout Lake, travelling about 17 kilometres overnight.Flin Flon firefighter Capt. Darren Romo says in one of their earliest successes, crews managed to stop a wildfire from pushing south into the city. (Travis Golby/CBC)Dauk nearly lost his home on Big Island Lake, southeast of Flin Flon. Kuras approached him while he was firefighting with seven others “who were just dog tired,” and told him his house might be gone by morning, he said.”You’re dirty, been fighting all day for days, and chief walked up to them, [and said] ‘Who’s going to help Dauk move his things?'” Dauk recalled.”They all stood up, and they just came and did it. It was pretty, pretty amazing.”By the morning of May 31, embers carried by howling winds wreaked havoc on Sally’s Beach Road, near Bakers Narrows — a dead-end street with about 70 waterfront properties, across the highway from the airport.”This was a fire that came in very aggressively,” Kuras said. “It became a real dogfight.”Flin Flon fire Chief Jason Kuras says 27 local firefighters battled to save their northern Manitoba city from wildfires without days off. (Travis Golby/CBC)”We’re putting out anything to try to save as many properties as we can, and the wind would pick up and sweep over, so we’d have to pull everybody out,” he said.”And it did that to us four times, to the point where guys were in serious jeopardy of being trapped.”Despite their efforts, a few cabins and a house were lost.”For a lot of my people that are in the Flin Flon department, they grew up here, so they know all these cottage owners,” said Kuras. “They know everybody here, so it’s very difficult to watch somebody else’s property be destroyed.”A total of 194 firefighters from 53 different municipal fire departments across Manitoba rallied to help Flin Flon throughout its month-long evacuation, Kuras said. The figure doesn’t include air support and wildland firefighters, who arrived more than a week into the firefight, or personnel from the province’s Office of the Fire Commissioner.’Could have changed at any moment’As firefighters were buzzing in and around an eerily empty Flin Flon during the evacuation, a handful of city councillors, workers and community members were pulling long hours to feed crews and look after 70 or so pets — including cats, dogs, chinchillas, birds and even a shark — that were left behind in homes.All of them survived, apart from one aging feline, said Coun. Judy Eagle, who cared for the animals alongside her husband, Harley.”The community trauma would have been monumental” had the outcome been different, she said.”I could not have that happen to people in my community.”Deputy Mayor Alison Dallas-Funk was among a couple dozen people at the makeshift command centre at city hall every day, listening to fire and weather projections, then switching gears to make meals, before recapping information for the community and sharing it online through videos.”I knew people were just looking for information, that they were scared, that they were worried for their loved ones that were still here, and [I] just really wanted to reassure them,” Dallas-Funk said.Deputy Mayor Alison Dallas-Funk was among a handful of community members who largely stayed in Flin Flon during the city’s month-long evacuation. (Travis Golby/CBC)”I didn’t realize making a three-minute video would be held so dearly by my community. I feel very humbled to be part of that.”In the end, the airport survived, as did the city of Flin Flon, in spite of another wildfire that roared through Denare Beach on June 2 and into Manitoba the next day, threatening the city from the southwest.”I think a lot of people will look at this as … a major milestone in firefighting, but I look at it as, it was a major milestone in structural firefighters showing what they can do when [their] backs are up against the wall,” Kuras said.Romo applauded his colleagues for gathering at the fire hall on their own after the wildfire started, and those who drove hours from across Manitoba to fight with them, but he doesn’t consider himself a hero.”It was amazing, honestly, the camaraderie we built,” Romo said.Dauk, too, is deeply grateful.”It could have changed at any moment where we lost everything,” he said.”To be part of the group that was able to fight this off … I feel very fortunate.”WATCH | Flin Flon firefighters reflect on their fight to save the city:Flin Flon firefighters reflect on battle to save cityFor more than four weeks straight this year, 28 Flin Flon firefighters battled to save their northern Manitoba city from wildfires. They recall the camaraderie and gratitude amid long exhausting shifts alongside crews from across the province.
Battle to save northern Manitoba city from wildfires ‘will never be forgotten,’ Flin Flon firefighters say
