Arturo Chang | CBC News | Posted: May 23, 2025 12:47 AM | Last Updated: 5 hours ago

850-1,000 residents began returning to rural municipality Wednesday

Some residents of the RM of Lac du Bonnet have returned home for the first time since the community was evacuated more than a week ago, only to find nothing but rubble left.

The return of between 850 and 1,000 people who were forced to leave the community on May 13 began Wednesday evening as firefighters contained the wildfire near the eastern Manitoba community.

Twenty-eight properties in the rural municipality were destroyed according to the RM. The now-4,000-hectare blaze has left vast stretches of land in the community, such as Wendigo Road, unrecognizable.

Brad Wood's home on Wendigo Road was one of the properties destroyed by the fire. On Thursday, he was touring the property for a third time since the area opened to residents.

Wood said seeing the devastation hasn't gotten any easier.

"Every time I get in, I feel even more, I guess, heartbroke," he said. "If you look at the before pictures with the flourishing forest, the vibrant people … you just look at this and just wonder like how does that survive?"

Wood built the home himself and he hoped he could move there when he retired. He said construction had just wrapped up last year, and he and his wife were just beginning to enjoy the property when the fire burned it to the ground.

"There's several others on the same boat here who'd recently just finished working or were almost completed," he said. "Now you're right back to even worse than starting over."

Paula Johnson, who lives in Grausdin Point, returned Thursday. She said her area was completely missed by the fire.

"It's very different. It's very sad," she said. "A lot of people … we knew them and, of course, they lost their places. You almost have survivor's guilt because your place made it and theirs didn't."

Residents of Mascanow Drive, Shauman Lane and Sunlee Road were the latest allowed to return to the community. The evacuation order in those areas was lifted on Thursday at 4 p.m.

The Lac du Bonnet emergency co-ordinator is asking residents to sign up for the CONNECT emergency alert system before they return home, and to prepare go-kits so they're able to leave with two hours notice.

Wood said about 18 homes and cottages on Wendigo Road were destroyed by the fire, in addition to garages, sheds boats, cars and other property.

Wood, who worked as a firefighter for 30 years, said he's never seen this level of destruction.

He said people who've lost their homes are only beginning to make their insurance claims, and that it may take several years to rebuild.

"A lot of us that we're dreaming of retiring here in the future, those aspirations may not come to fruition just strictly because the forest will not come back in that time," he said.

"You look out at the lake, it's beautiful. The water's untouched. But you look to the forest behind me, it's just a barren, black wasteland."