Fleeing C.B.N. fire was like 'the gates of hell opened,' Adam's Cove resident says

Sitting in the safety of the Salem Community Centre in Small Point, N.L., Richard Hayward of Adam's Cove compares fleeing his home to fleeing from hell.

"You see the whole community on fire right around you … It's the gates of hell opened up," Hayward told Radio-Canada on Thursday.

"Within 10 minutes, I see the fire coming. Coming down, and the rise and the blazes, I'd say it was a couple hundred feet high."

Hayward was one of many residents in the town of Small Point-Broad Cove-Blackhead-Adam's Cove running from an out of control wildfire.

The fire was deemed contained on Thursday afternoon, as crews dealt with remaining hot spots. The fire burned as large as about 600 hectares.

The town has been under a state of emergency since Wednesday night. More than 20 buildings have been damaged or destroyed, the provincial government said on Thursday, including at least 12 homes.

Hayward's home still stands, he said, but his shed was lost.

"It came right to the road to my place and went right around my boundary line. Good thing I had my grass cut low, that's what the firefighter said. That's what saved my place," he said.

Scott Penney lives down the road from Hayward. He says he smelled smoke in his home on Wednesday afternoon and quickly evacuated with his family.

"By the time I got up to the end of the track to see [about] my neighbours and get them, all was engulfed. My front yard, my neighbours house in front of me, that was all gone," Penney said.

"Our town of Adam's Cove is gone."

Penney said he hopes insurance companies can respond to the damage quickly, but rebuilding will be a challenging process.

"We've got a population of 52 people, and now we got seniors with their house gone. How are they going to rebuild?"

Wildfire evacuation earlier than past years

The evacuation isn't the first of its kind in Newfoundland and Labrador, but could be among the earliest in recent history.

Newfoundland's forest fire season typically runs from the end of April to the end of September. In Labrador it's around mid-May to the end of September.

Last year, Labrador communities dealt with the same large-scale evacuation because of wildfires. Churchill Falls was evacuated on June 19, and Labrador City did the same just weeks later.

In 2022, large-scale forest fires in the Bay d'Espoir area prompted a state of emergency that lasted nearly a week that August.

Newfoundland and Labrador's active wildfire dashboard, which tracks the size and status of fires, reported 96 in 2024. 

As of Thursday, there have been 58 reported wildfires so far in 2025.

"I'm very concerned," Jeff Motty, provincial forest fire duty officer, told CBC's Here & Now on Thursday, adding parts of the province are abnormally dry for this time of year.

"Here we are, May 8, with 607 hectares [burned] on the books already. I just kind of look at every fire season as different, and I'm hopeful, you know, the rain's going to come."

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