(CNN) — At first, all Miiyah Paavola could see was a thick wall of smoke.
From her home in Namaygoosisagagun First Nation, northwestern Ontario, the smoke appeared close.
But the remote Indigenous community says that on that Monday, July 13, they were told by the Ministry of Natural Resources there was no immediate danger.
Within hours, they were fleeing for their lives.
“It was all very fast-paced. There was not really much time to think about what was happening,” Paavola told CNN.
She grabbed a wet towel before squeezing aboard a small aluminum boat with five other people, three dogs and a cat. The isolated community, also known as Collins First Nation, has no road access, only a railway line and Collins Lake.
Paavola couldn’t fully grasp the scope of the danger until her boat pulled away.
“All you could see was orange and gray and it was very dark,” she said. But as they sailed away, she could finally see just how close they’d been to the fires. “When I was going across maybe about the second island, that’s when I watched it. I could just barely see the flames reach the shoreline. And it was a very thick wall of smoke that followed it very quickly.”
“If we had waited any longer, we would have been dead.”
Only 25 of the community’s roughly 60 members were in Collins when the fire arrived. Residents say that likely saved lives, as people crowded into aging 12- and 14-foot aluminum boats powered by decades-old motors. Many had to leave their pets behind.
The fires that devastated Collins are part of a wider wildfire emergency unfolding across Canada, where 889 active fires were spreading as of Thursday night, according to the Canadian Wildland Fire Information System. Of those, 163 active wildfires are in Ontario, according to the province’s Ministry of Natural Resources.
‘All I could think was my children were gone’
Miiyah remembers the escape itself being just as terrifying as the fire.
“It was very scary,” she said. “There were quite a few times I felt like we were about to tip.”
Their boat faced strong waves during the roughly 40 minutes it took to sail from the northern to the southern part of Collins Lake. Shortly after leaving the shore, they struck a rock and nearly flipped.
Miiyah’s mother, Chief Helen Paavola, wasn’t in the village when the fire broke out. She said a fire official had told her earlier that there was no immediate danger, insisting the smoke residents were seeing came from a smoldering fire farther away.
Chief Paavola remembers the moments of agony when she couldn’t reach members of the community during the evacuation, including her daughter and two sons.
“All I could think was … they’re gone. My children are gone. My community is gone,” she told CNN. “There are no words to explain the relief that I felt when I knew everybody was out.”
But just like all other houses in Collins First Nation, her home was completely destroyed by the fires.
At a press conference with Ontario Premier Doug Ford, government officials said that the fire had started unusually close to the community in Collins, leaving little time to respond. The government said that it would review its response to the situation.
A community turned to ash
The destruction of Collins has become one of the starkest examples of the devastation caused by this week’s fires.
According to Linda Debassige, Grand Council Chief of the Anishinabek Nation in Ontario, more than 30 homes were lost, along with the administration office, school, community center, storage buildings, vehicles and essential community equipment.
“If they waited for an emergency response,” she said, “we would all be on a recovery mission looking for the bodies of children, elderly people, men and women.”
The organization, which represents 39 First Nations, including Collins, says it is currently paying for accommodation, meals and supplies for evacuees staying in the nearby city of Thunder Bay because government support has yet to arrive.
She says Collins has fallen through jurisdictional cracks because it is considered a “near band,” a community still working toward full federal recognition, complicating access to government support.
The community had also been threatened by wildfire only weeks earlier, she said, but little was done afterward to better protect it through fire breaks or other preventative measures.
Growing concerns over wildfire preparedness
The destruction of Collins has renewed questions about whether Ontario’s wildfire strategy is keeping pace with increasingly intense fire seasons.
Lise Vaugeois, the Member of Provincial Parliament representing Thunder Bay-Superior North, says at least a dozen communities across northwestern Ontario remain under evacuation or standby orders.
“This is the first time, in my knowledge, that communities within a three-hour drive of Thunder Bay have had to be evacuated,” she told CNN.
She said increasingly intense fires are exposing gaps in wildfire preparedness, pointing to the need for more firefighting resources, prescribed burns and fire breaks to reduce fuel before fire season.
“It’s become acceptable somehow that First Nations communities get evacuated every year,” she said. “It’s traumatizing, and I’m sure the effects will be with people for a very long time.”
Even communities outside the immediate fire zone are feeling the impact.
“Thunder Bay has ash falling down and the air quality is quite bad,” Vaugeois said.
The smoke has spread hundreds of miles beyond northwestern Ontario, affecting people far from the fire line. Toronto, Canada’s largest city, woke on Wednesday beneath hazy orange skies as the smell of wood smoke lingered in the air, prompting Environment Canada to issue air quality warnings and advise residents about the health risks of spending time outdoors.
Smoke far beyond the flames
For those with respiratory issues, the effects are much more grueling. That’s the case for Scott Bailey, a resident of Belleville, Ontario, who has Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD).
“The last two days have been severely hazy out. It’s been like nine o’clock at night every day, for the whole day,” he said.
For Bailey, living with a chronic lung disease means every change in air quality matters. While inhaling isn’t his biggest challenge, his lungs struggle to expel carbon dioxide. Smoke-filled air makes that even harder.
“It’s like breathing through a straw,” he said.
“When you breathe polluted air full of smoke like this, it makes it a lot worse. There’s a lot of molecules and stuff in the air because of the forest fires. It’s just not the smoke – there’s lots of stuff in the smoke,” he explained.
The worsening air quality means significant changes to his daily routine.
“My wife loves to have the windows open during the summer, but that’s the first thing we stop doing,” Bailey said. “You need clean air ventilation, and you’ve got to have air purifiers and your oxygen near you.”
Even simple errands now require planning, and he is avoiding leaving his home.
“You have to plan things like going grocery shopping or going to someone’s house. You have to make sure your car has air circulation, so the air is fresh.”
‘There’s hope’
It’s unclear when the fires will die out and the air will clear.
For the people of Collins, the smoke hanging over Ontario is only a reminder of what they left behind.
Chief Paavola says her community is grieving what they have lost. “There’s despair, there’s confusion, there’s hurt, there’s mourning, but there’s hope.”
She says there has never been any doubt about what comes next.
“We are going home,” she said. “We’re going to rebuild, and we are going home.”
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