Fire forged stronger bonds, says North Shore mayor

By Olivia Bradbury, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

There was no doubting what would be top of mind for Small Point -Adam’s Cove-Blackhead-Broad Cove Mayor Curtis Delaney during his end of year interview with The Shoreline last month.
Delaney’s town was at the centre of the Kingston wildfire that ravished Conception Bay’s North Shore this past summer.
The Broad Cove native, an engineer who commutes to a job in St. John’s, had only been on council for a little over two years, and mayor for one, when he was plunged into managing his community’s response to the biggest disaster in its history, not once, but twice.
The first wildfire erupted in May and destroyed 40 structures, 12 of them homes. Then came the even bigger conflagration in August.
“It’s been a very stressful year for the whole region, not just our town,” said Delaney. “Having to deal with that the whole summer, it’s made it challenging to do other things around town. This (past) year was shaping up to be a year that we were going to finally be able to catch up on some things around town.”
Council was making progress on a number of items, he allowed, when the area was thrown into crisis.
It took a lot of the Town’s resources to deal with the Adam’s Cove fire and its aftermath in May, Delaney said.
“And we never really caught up with that, to be honest with you.”
Whenever things began to get organized again, another fire would begin.
“It was that way the whole summer. You were in constant flux,” said the mayor. “You couldn’t really move forward, like. You’d take one step ahead, two steps back.”
The Kingston fire in August saw the town’s residents evacuated for weeks. The town was forced to deal with a disaster and do what it could to help its residents. The fire covered over 10,000 hectares and destroyed some 700 structures including approximately 200 homes.
The town and its residents were shaken, but they didn’t break.
“From a municipal standpoint, I think we’re doing fairly well,” said Delaney. “We still have some issues with our municipal water system, but we’re working through that as time and weather permits. From a residential standpoint, with people that have lost homes, I think most properties at this point in time have been cleaned up. And there are some people that are starting to rebuild.”
Residents, he said, are doing their best to move forward.
“They’re looking for any bit of hope that they can get and looking towards the next year as a new start in some ways. It’s encouraging to see,” he added. “Nothing’s insurmountable.”
Delaney said friends, families, and the community as a whole have grown closer following the fire.
“Moving ahead from this, we have to start to get some sense of normalcy back and make the community a place that people want to continue to live in,” said the mayor.
That not only means keeping the residents it has, but attracting more, and new businesses, he said, to make the North Shore more economically viable.
“That’s one of the big reasons that I even considered joining council — to see what I could do to make the place better,” said Delaney. “I’d like to see the community as strong throughout the next year as we have been through this past summer.”