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The Current Transcript for May 11, 2016

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

It’s essentially a lifetime of fire fighting in an hour. And to get 30 houses, a whole block, a whole subdivision on fire, it’s uncommon for that to happen.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: They have spent years answering the emergency calls that bring them to fires and disaster, but this one would prove to be their most challenging. Within a day of orders that all residents must leave Fort McMurray, three fire fighters from St. Albert, near Edmonton, would join hundreds of others heading in from their own communities to try to help extinguish a city on fire. Collectively, they saved as much as 90 per cent of Fort McMurray, but that came with tough decisions. In order to save many homes some were deliberately destroyed. In a moment we'll hear from three men who worked through exhaustion on the fire lines, what they saw and felt, what stays with them now. We'll also be exploring the effects of the smoke and ash and debris on the health of fire fighters. All of that in our first and second half hours. And then a story that begins with another fire far away.

SOUNDCLIP

So, I just realized it’s more fun as a boy and the only way to live freely outside I had to burn all my girly dresses.

AMT: Maria Toorpakai was only four years old when she set her elaborate traditional dresses alight. In Pakistan’s tribal area known as Waziristan all girls are taught to get in line. She never did. Today, she's a squash champion living in Toronto. Hear her story of defiance for the love of sport in an hour. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

'A lifetime of firefighting in an hour:' Firefighters recall tackling Fort McMurray fire

Guests: Steve Gillingham, Mike Chyka , Bryan Mroz

MIKE CHYKA: This is the very moment when we pulled up. We got out of the van.

[Indecipherable speech and heavy static]

AMT: It's raging.

STEVE GILLINGHAM: Right, and there, how do you fight that?

AMT: They are used to racing up to a fire. This time they raced right into it.

STEVE GILLINGHAM: Oh yeah, just flying embers.

AMT: Embers.

MIKE CHYKA: Another video of when we first got there. So you can see the wind-driven smoke and flames right into the building.

AMT: They’ve all pulled out their phones with pictures of just how bad it got. We’re at Fire Hall Number Three in the city of St. Albert on the northwest edge of Edmonton with Steve Gillingham, Bryan Mroz, and Mike Chyka .

MIKE CHYKA: So as you pan across, so you’re looking left to right. You can see the condos. They’re in good shape. The street lights are still working. Our fire trucks here.

AMT: They’ve seen a lot. But they’ve never seen anything like Fort McMurray.

MIKE CHYKA: So, we’re protecting those houses and then as you look down the street again, it’s okay.

AMT: It’s surreal.

MIKE CHYKA: And you can see the boom right there in the middle.

BRYAN MROZ: And the boys are right in there.

MIKE CHYKA: And right to our back, right from where this picture is taken, right behind us there’s a three-storey condo untouched.

AMT: They had lots of pictures. We’re sharing some on our website, cbc.ca/thecurrent. And they had lots of stories, but I wanted them to start at the beginning. Here’s what they told me.

STEVE GILLINGHAM: Tuesday is when they started talking about getting resources up to Fort McMurray. The initial-- We sent three, correction, four guys on an aerial. That was on Tuesday. And we deployed the next day, Wednesday, in the afternoon is when they sent our team of four up.

AMT: And how long were you there?

STEVE GILLINGHAM: We were there 51 hours total, I do believe. They were trying to cycle guys in and out in two, two and a half day cycles. Hard work, no sleep.

AMT: Right through?

STEVE GILLINGHAM: Right through. I think we had four hours sleep total. I mean, when things are burning, right, you don’t stop.

MIKE CHYKA: Yeah. So, we worked our night shift. We got off that morning. By the time we got called around 1:30 and we deployed at 4:00. 4:30 is when we left. We got there around 10:30-ish. And then we started going right to work. We actually went to one of, I think, one of the bigger fires that was going on at that point. They lost-- I'm not sure how big the subdivision was, they lost a good portion of that subdivision. And it was something to see. For the lack of-- The best word I can use apocalyptic. And turn to your left, burning, and turn to your right, the houses were gone. And everything's on fire. Everything is on fire. At that point we actually had to retreat the fire trucks and move back. And they had to move in backhoes and bulldozers to knock houses down so we could actually create a fire line. And we had to create a point where we had to protect. We said, this is the line we're going to protect, everything else is lost. So that's how we set up. And we started protecting those houses. To see houses that are being knocked down that are not burning at that point, but it was a necessity, right. Yeah. It's amazing. And people's cars getting pushed over, bulldozers piled up.

BRYAN MROZ: Lots of teamwork. Everybody working together, the excavators, bulldozer drivers, tanker drivers. Everybody’s working together. At that point they lost both their hydrants up there too and so we were working together with the tankers that aren’t normally supplying our fire trucks with water. And that’s how we got our water up there.

AMT: And so when you're working together, you're working with other teams as well?

STEVE GILLINGHAM: Other departments, industry with their trucks, with their water trucks coming in from sites with Suncor. And, yeah, just getting those tender water trucks to get into a sequence where we can properly feed our trucks and that took a while to dial in but it worked pretty good.

AMT: You just went right to the scene and Mike talked a little bit about what it's like to just drive up and start working in this neighbourhood.

STEVE GILLINGHAM: It was eerie even driving into the city. All you saw was a red glow.

MIKE CHYKA: It looked like a second sunset.

STEVE GILLINGHAM: Yeah. And there was nothing on the highway until we got to the point where the RCs - this was the evacuation point. There was no access. The cops let us through and you're driving down these highways where vehicles abandoned everywhere.

MIKE CHYKA: They were, like, the fire had passed that area, but things are still on fire. So, on the other side of the highway it was burnt. So, a lot of chaos going on and then, like I said, if you’ve ever seen those television shows they have, like Walking Dead, for instance, that's probably the best one. You see cars just scattered everywhere and there's nobody. And then add fire on top of that.

AMT: Talk to me, then, a little bit more. What was your impression, Steve, as you went in. What were you thinking as you…?

STEVE GILLINGHAM: Well, I guess you get a real sense of the gravity of what's going on here, right. Losing entire blocks in a city, it’s just not common anywhere. As we're driving through, you could see fire everywhere. Then to our first call, the first call we had was that one up in Prospect and seeing 30 homes on fire. It’s a sight you're not going to easily soon forget. And then trying to figure out a way to fight that as also the entire fire line is retreating to a new point. So, doesn't matter how much experience you have on the job. You're going to be taken back by that much fire in that many homes.

MIKE CHYKA: It’s essentially a life time of fire fighting in an hour. Not even an hour. We were there for hours, but when you pull up to scene-- to get 30 houses, a whole block. a whole subdivision on fire, it's uncommon for that to happen.

AMT: Bryan, what sticks in your mind?

BRYAN MROZ: It’s the same thing. Watching the houses go was-- 30 seconds per house, it was just house after house, right, and the incident command there made a very good call when he decided to make that fire line, right. He realized how fast it was burning, how fast his excavators and bulldozers could work and make that fire line ahead of it, right. He ended up saving an entire neighbourhood with only losing a couple homes when he could have lost the entire thing. So, very good decision-making up there and very good teamwork.

STEVE GILLINGHAM: It’s tough to watch houses that aren’t burning to be bulldozed. Your job is to protect houses, property, and people. And you’re just watching these beautiful homes being taken down in seconds.

AMT: Why are they being taken down in seconds? Like, how can they—

MIKE CHYKA: There’s an excavator here. He just comes in with this boom, knocks the house down. The point is is to create a fire line. It’s kind of the only really proven way to stop a fire that’s raging like that. So you create a line and then you protect that line.

STEVE GILLINGHAM: So, that incident commander probably saved half of Timberlea, because there was no way to stop that fire. And you had a shopping centre that would have went up next. You had a seven-storey condo building that was right in line. So, the captain from Fort McMurray who made that call, he one wound up saving hundreds of homes.

AMT: And so the decision to do that depends on where the fire is and how it's moving and what you think you can save.

STEVE GILLINGHAM: Absolutely.

MIKE CHYKA: Yeah, the wind direction is key, right. If the wind is not playing in your favour, those fires may move that much faster. The ashes, there are huge embers flying in the air. All it needs to do is land on a roof, catch, and then…

STEVE GILLINGHAM: That one’s gone.

MIKE CHYKA: Then you’ve really got to start really working.

STEVE GILLINGHAM: When we rolled on scene the crew before us was there and we were doing a switchover. We were fresh. They've been on there for about a day now. So they were retreating as we were pulling in and it was like something out of a war movie. These guys were blackened faces, charring. Everything is moving back because they're trying to re-establish that line. It was a fast handover. Things got handed over fast. There wasn’t a whole lot of questions. Incident command figured out where they wanted to make us, basically, make our last stand and everybody went moving. Trucks moved fast, water moved fast, bulldozers, front end loaders, everyone. Everyone got focused on the exact same task.

MIKE CHYKA: These are major massive trucks on the road. You have backhoes, water trucks, support staff. And all we did was pick up hoses and carry them to back the trucks up.

AMT: What does it smell like as you doing this? What's in the air?

MIKE CHYKA: Chemicals. That's really-- Black. Chemicals. That's it. Smoke burns your nose.

AMT: Do you have masks on?

MIKE CHYKA: At that point, no, we didn't. Because you just got to the scene and you're doing the changeover. You want it to go smoothly, but in that kind of situation there's a lot of things going on. Especially establishing a new point to fight for, right. Yeah, so sometimes safety doesn’t get pushed to the side, but for the greater good you have to bypass some of that.

AMT: But somewhere in that 51hours you would have had to put on masks?

MIKE CHYKA: Oh, yeah. Of course we did.

AMT: And so again what are you seeing in the sky and what are you hearing?

STEVE GILLINGHAM: Explosions.

MIKE CHYKA: Yeah.

STEVE GILLINGHAM: Fire raging. Fire sounding like wind turbines. It’s crazy. And you’re yelling to the guy next to you because you can barely hear what’s going on. So, when you’re doing handover with staff, you’re really hear the guys saying and yelling, you’ve got to do this, you’ve got to do that, we’re doing this. The only think I can think of is that everyone had their A game on. Nobody was lost. Things got—orders came and they were immediately carried out.

AMT: What was exploding?

MIKE CHYKA: So, within a house you have your hot water tanks, you have propane, people store propane cylinders. Anything compressed. Like a spray can even. All those things you forget you even have in your garage. All those things come into play. Sometimes they’re small explosions; sometimes they’re loud and so loud that it vibrates the ground. And you hear that all the time, constantly, because new houses are catching fire and that’s all you’re hearing. All those other sounds, like the beeping you at construction sites, well, magnify that. Plus, your trucks are running at high RPMs to get the water flowing. And, like Steve said, you are literally standing, like, as close as we are right now, inches from each other and yelling at each other just to have that conversation of the handover. And those guys we relieved, they’d been working for probably close to 30 hours. Pure exhaustion on their face to the point where they could barely string a sentence together. They were just exhausted.

AMT: As you face that and you're trying to work on the fire line, if you were to turn around, what would be behind you?

MIKE CHYKA: What you would see in a normal subdivision. The thing that was kind of amazing too is when you see the equipment moving the debris around. Like, everything is still energized, so you have a lot of wires popping and seeing a lot of electricity sparking. So just to see all that and, you know, the different materials burning, like, the coppers and things like that. So, different hues and different colours of fire. And just the smell, it’s such a powerful chemical.

BRYAN MROZ: Lot of plastics in modern construction, right. Everybody has vinyl siding, everybody has tires stored in their house. It just burnt black, right. You had the glow of fire underneath, intense glow, and then 10 metres up it was nothing but black.

AMT: You know, we were talking to the mayor of Slave Lake who also went up to fight and he said when you get that combination of a forest fire and an urban fire together it changes everything.

STEVE GILLINGHAM: The forest fire makes its own weather patterns. So it's got a lot of up draft as that air mass rises, superhot, so that makes the wind issue worse. It’s basically because you have this air-fuelled fire driving through your city and it picks its lanes. Like, if it’s blowing north-west, it’s going to burn north-west. And that’s hard to control. Usually, if it’s a city fire, you’ll have house or a commercial space will catch on fire and it’s contained, but once you get such a large forest fire burning and it's moving through your city it's virtually unstoppable.

MIKE CHYKA: The wildfires generate their own weather patterns and the wind-driven and these ashes can go for miles, so you can catch a house that’s in a subdivision that’s not even touched by fire. And now suddenly you see this whole area up in smoke and flames, right. So now we have to peel off from your crews that are fighting this frontline fire to that, right, and keeping in mind you have no water. You have to redeploy your water trucks to get to that scene as well, fire trucks. So, again, your resources are being drawn down to continue the fight. And, again, everywhere you looked around the city, like, you could turn your head 360 degrees and you’d see fire somewhere in the distance.

STEVE GILLINGHAM: It was Thursday, right, we were driving on 63 and we're on our supposedly down time, but we're trying to get out and rescue animals from their homes. And there was a fire just started in the middle of—Like, we were on 63, there was a block housing to our left and there was a fire, and it looked like it was in the tree, that immediately spread to the shed, to the back of the house and other fire crews eventually got to, but there was no fire, kilometres away from that site, but an ember just had landed. Everything was lighting up and it was just which way the wind was blowing and luck. You know, if an ember didn't fall on your house, it didn't burn.

AMT: So when you looked up at the sky, like, were embers coming down on you?

STEVE GILLINGHAM: It was pretty smoky. Hard to say.

MIKE CHYKA: At times. Depending, again, with the wind changing, like, you’d see actual just masses of ashes that are flying, that are lit, that are lit. Like, it’s not just ash smoke, right. It’s actually lit embers flying through the air.

BRYAN MROZ: Yeah, brands.

MIKE CHYKA: Yeah, brands, yes.

BRYAN MROZ: And they’re landing on the houses and that's what we were assigned to was protect that last line of houses there to keep it from spreading across the street.

AMT: How much danger were you in? How dangerous is this?

STEVE GILLINGHAM: All fire is dangerous, right.

MIKE CHYKA: Yeah, it’s tough to answer because there are a lot of factors, there are a lot of people there, there are not a lot of egress routes and the fire is moving quickly. So, again, yes, the potential for it to be lethal, I guess, you’re dependent on the wind. That’s really what it comes down to and your resources. If you don’t have the water and the wind picks up, it catches the houses, you can’t get the trucks out fast enough, things happen in a heartbeat. You're in a good battle. You're not really thinking about that at that point, right. You just want to get your tasks done and move on to the next task and keep machine rolling, I guess, right.

AMT: You said started rescuing animals at one point. Tell me what you did.

MIKE CHYKA: Yeah, so we had fought that night and then we had, again, a couple hours sleep. You just want to keep—You know, there’s so much to do. So, at the staging area that where actually everybody was staying, there’s soccer fields. It’s an indoor tri-leisure centre, right. So, there’s soccer fields, hockey rinks, pools. They did assign one of the areas for sleeping quarters and the other side was kind of more for eating and just rehab kind of stuff. They actually brought in brand new clothes for you if you didn’t bring any, just necessities, toiletries for you if you didn’t bring that kind of stuff. So, they also used the dressing rooms for animals. So, they had one room for cats, one room for dogs. So, you know, we kind of poked our heads in there, saw that there were some animals. Steve’s friend had actually contacted him about some animals that they wanted to get rescued. That’s kind of how it started for us.

STEVE GILLINGHAM: And then when we brought those two cats back, then the guy had a list, the guy who was kind of manning that pet inventory place for the pets that were lost or that were being rescued and brought back. So he's like, can you help me with these?

BRYAN MROZ: Well, he was a civilian, right, so he wasn’t allowed to go into the houses himself and rescue the animals. And he was heading to Edmonton that day to bring a load of animals down, so we said, well—He gave us a list and said, can you guys help?

MIKE CHYKA: So, our captain took the phone numbers and he actually texted each owner asking for permission to either break into their house, whatever necessary, if it’s okay if we can go into their house. And everybody was like, do whatever you have to do to get into our house. Our Captain Rob Bonner said people would reply ‘absolutely’ in capital letters in the text. Like, do whatever you have to do to get that animal.

AMT: So you went into some houses to do that? Tell me more about what the animals were doing in their house. They must have been terrified.

MIKE CHYKA: The one animal that stuck out for me was that little—I’m not sure—

BRYAN MROZ: Bubbles was—

MIKE CHYKA: Bubbles was the one.

AMT: And Bubbles was a little dog? Okay.

MIKE CHYKA: Very happy to see us. But there was a second one sitting on the couch scared, didn’t move, was just shaking on the couch. Bubbles was a—

BRYAN MROZ: Happy go lucky.

[All talking at once]

MIKE CHYKA: He met us at the door.

BRYAN MROZ: Yeah, came, jumped on us, right, and wagging the tail the whole time, happy to see humans again, right.

STEVE GILLINGHAM: But, you know what, they were starting to in rough trouble. They had run out of water. When we were giving the cat or dog water you could tell that they were starting to struggle, because they were very thirsty and they’re also very hungry. But, yeah, we spent our downtime on our second day doing that.

MIKE CHYKA: Yeah. I just remember that one dog sitting on the couch. It wouldn’t even move. It was just shaking. Considering that were complete strangers walking into a house, most animals are protective of their owners, of their house—

STEVE GILLINGHAM: And Mike got bit.

[Laughter]

MIKE CHYKA: Yeah, just once, but understandable.

AMT: Yeah?

MIKE CHYKA: Like, again, every animal reacts differently.

AMT: Which animal bit you? It wasn’t Bubbles.

MIKE CHYKA: No, no. Not Bubbles. Bubbles sat in the vehicle with us. We were going around for a couple of hours. He loved the car ride. It was awesome.

BRYAN MROZ: He loved it. It was great.

MIKE CHYKA: Yeah, it was—I don’ t know.

BRYAN MROZ: It was like a Pomeranian cross.

STEVE GILLINGHAM: That was the house with two dogs.

MIKE CHYKA: Yeah, and a cat in the basement.

STEVE GILLINGHAM: Then we also found this cat there basement, but that one dog was just not liking it and gave Mike a little love bite. [Laughs]

MIKE CHYKA: Yeah. Even from the moment we stepped up, he was at the door barking at us, this thing. Again, for the most part, that’s how I expect to see most animals. It was the exact opposite. Most of the animals are very happy to see you, almost jumping into your arms.

BRYAN MROZ: Well, we picked up that Lab in the backyard, right. And he was barking, growling. His haunches were up the back. Then we went into the backyard, said hi, and then he’s rubbing against us, crying, right, because he hasn’t seen anybody in so long. But, again, protecting the house, but then realizes that we’re not there to harm him or the house. And they’re all happy once we get them, right.

MIKE CHYKA: They’re jumping -- Some of these dogs are huge.

BRYAN MROZ: Yeah.

STEVE GILLINGHAM: Bentley the Pitbull.

BRYAN MROZ: Yeah.

MIKE CHYKA: He was so happy.

STEVE GILLINGHAM: Greatest dog ever, right. He was just a beautiful, just a beast of an animal. Any other day he probably would have did some damage to us. [Laughter] But that particular day, I was feeding him out of my hand. And most animals sometimes they have a hard time jumping into vehicles or they don’t want to. All these guys jumped in, no problem. Like, where are we going?

AMT: They knew. They knew they had to. So you knew their names from the owners?

MIKE CHYKA: Yes. Yeah.

AMT: But this is on your down time. And then you had to go back and fight a fire.

MIKE CHYKA: Yeah. All day—Or all night, rather.

AMT: Steve Gillingham, Bryan Mroz, and Mike Chyka, firefighters, have more to tell us. They're all firefighters for the city of St. Albert. St. Albert’s just on the northwest edge of Edmonton. They worked a 51-hour shift on the Fort McMurray fire and they have lots to talk about what they saw. If you to see some of their photos that they've given us from the frontlines, you can visit our site, cbc.ca/thecurrent. And while you're there, click on the Contact link. Let us know what you're thinking as you listen to them. You can also find us-- We are @thecurrentCBC, we’ve got the pictures there on Twitter as well. @thecurrentCBC. Now, here is how my conversation continued with firefighters Steve Gillingham, Bryan Mroz, and Mike Chyka. I'm wondering, when you close your eyes what stays with you? What’s the image you can't forget?

[All talking at once]

BRYAN MROZ: Yeah, that Timberlea area. That first night, right. All those houses on fire was—Never see that again. You see the devastation in the other neighbourhoods that were already burnt before we got there, right, but just seeing that active fire.

AMT: So they were disintegrating in front of you?

BRYAN MROZ: Oh, probably 30 seconds a house.

MIKE CHYKA: Two distinct images stick in my mind. Like, as I mentioned, pulling into town with the vehicles just strewn everywhere, smoke, and both sides of the road on fire. And then pulling up to that subdivision and, again, the noise. All the senses being activated, right, when you see something of that magnitude on fire. Those two will always stay in my mind for as long as I live.

STEVE GILLINGHAM: It was see in those houses that were burning being dropped, because you saw people's lives there. These houses were fully furnished. Maybe they grabbed their documents. That was it. And these houses-- You know, there were TVs, there was pets—no, sorry, there wasn’t pets. You could see if they had a kid, right. There was toys; there was dolls there. So seeing those houses, I mean, like, you know that that someone's life being completely torn apart.

MIKE CHYKA: The evacuation happened so quickly. You know what? These people were at work. And they said, you're out of town now. Get out of town. Grab your kids and that's it. And you know, you walk into the houses, there's cereal bowls there with the spoon still in it. People were mid cooking dinner. Whatever they were doing, it was dropped and left. So it's easy for people to say, well, they should have grabbed this, they should have grabbed that, but when you're stressed out like that, you have a moment’s notice to grab a couple of items-- If you can sit back and think, okay, what would I grab? Well, when you're calm and nothing's going on around you, fine, you could think of all the things in the world, but when you have someone at your door saying, let’s go. It’s time to go.

AMT: Some people never even got to their house.

MIKE CHYKA: No. They were at work. And that’s why they couldn’t get their animals. They were lucky to get to the school to pick up their children.

AMT: I wanted to ask a question about-- You talked about the sight of the houses that were part of the fire line as they bulldozed. So, as they bulldozed those things, you could actually see into—

STEVE GILLINGHAM: It was like a bucket. If you had contents in a bucket , things were just spilling out of houses just by the way they were being torn down, right. They were coming out fast. Bedroom sets, dressers, kids’ room, toys, anything. Everything was just coming apart.

MIKE CHYKA: I remember the next morning after we kind of did some hot spots as well. Like, you’d see family photos just sitting in the debris. Just… just weird seeing, like, a tool here, a picture there, coffee cup there. Very interesting among all the other destruction.

AMT: Sometimes it's one little thing, huh? Instead of a pile of things, it’s that one thing that—

MIKE CHYKA: Yeah. It’s the family pictures. How do you recover those things, right.

STEVE GILLINGHAM: In certain homes, like, we had—one of the firefighters on scene, his mom’s friend said can you go by my place in Beacon Hill? And all that we could salvage was a little bit of wooden number of 224.

MIKE CHYKA: Address plaque.

STEVE GILLINGHAM: Everything else was turned to ash. Everything. Most places there's a little bit standing. This place had literally turned into ash.

AMT: Is that partly because of the intensity?

MIKE CHYKA: Such a fuel load in the house. Just think of all those items in your house that just light up. Everything lights up. There was a motorcycle in that garage and the wheels were melted to a puddle. There was nothing. You couldn’t even tell it was a wheel other than it was right beside the bike where the wheel would be. That's the intensity of a fire, right.

AMT: I know you have a lot of adrenaline and you’re really focused when you're there, but when you come back and you think about that, I’m wondering, what other things you think about. What kind of emotions you have about what you've seen and what you know that destruction means to people?

MIKE CHYKA: Well, you certainly put a lot more value your family. Of course you love your family, but you realize the importance of that even that much more. And then material things, you see all these material things sitting there and really and true, that isn’t what counts. It’s having your family together. Yeah, it's devastating to see people lose everything. But, yeah, it really put things into perspective.

AMT: What about you, Steve? What do you think about now that you're back?

STEVE GILLINGHAM: You mostly think about the people who've lost everything. I mean, Fort Mac has always had issues with access to housing and stuff and now how bad that's going to be for those folks for a long time. But, yeah, that's the part, when I think about it, it's going to be a long time before that town is normal. It's going to be years before Fort Mac is back to where it was.

MIKE CHYKA: And also you think of the firefighters in Fort MacMurry, the actual guys that work and live in that city. Some of the guys lost their houses and they're still working. Where do they go? Right? That's their livelihoods. Their family is there. So, now they're separated not only from their family, they’re still working, and now they have no house. So, compound all those factors, I give those guys a lot of credit, right. And they weren't stopping. We saw crew-- One of the trucks, actually, I think they lost an engine. It burnt out, their engine, their fire truck. It wasn’t running. And those guys are beyond exhausted, pretty much walking zombies.

AMT: And they were still fighting.

MIKE CHYKA: Yeah.

AMT: Help us understand, because it is exhausting work, but really spell it out for me in terms of the physical exertion it takes for you to be fighting a fire for that long. What are you doing?

STEVE GILLINGHAM: The three of us are big guys and you’ve got to think everything with water is heavy, like the high volume hose with water weighs hundreds of pounds. The heat from it – you’re trying to wear gear that’s keeping you safe, that also retains heat. It’s just the-- I think a lot of people don't get how hard it is to fight fires. And I mean, you've got fit guys here and it's some of the most strenuous work you'll ever do in your life. And it doesn't stop until the fire’s out. You can’t say I’m going to go take a 15-minute break. That’s not the way it works. Then you're passing off that work to someone else. So, you know you're there and you know you are for hours. But it's hard, dirty, nasty work.

AMT: And it's very hot?

STEVE GILLINGHAM: Really hot.

MIKE CHYKA: The day we pulled up it was, I believe, 30 degrees that day and it didn’t really cool off at night. Like Steve says, you’re pulling hose, but you’re also walking through debris. You have to move these things. There's a lot of things you can’t see- rebar sticking out of the ground, sharp objects, all these things. Our captain slipped on some debris, fell, sliced his arm at bit.

AMT: And are your feet wet? You’ve got water pouring around?

MIKE CHYKA: Yeah. Yeah, you’re filthy, right. You’re filthy top to bottom.

BRYAN MROZ: Well, water and sweat. You’re constantly soaked. You don’t get a chance to dry off. Dragging the hoses through that debris, too, they get snagged and so you have to go back, find out where the snag is and free it. A lot of times, especially on that first night, we had to move the hose back and forth because these big trucks needed to get through, these excavators, right, to help move the debris so could put it out. Yeah, these excavator drivers too, they’re sitting on top of the fire in their trucks and just in the smoke and heat of it too. And I give them big props for not being trained either for this kind of even, right. And then we would sit there and cool off their trucks, because they were overheating, with our water. Then they are steaming, right, because they're getting so hot, overworked with the engines and the fire heating them up too. Bucketful of fire, right, and those trucks did awesome for us.

AMT: How do you get resupplied with water and fuel to keep all that stuff running?

STEVE GILLINGHAM: We carry enough water for us, probably, for a good seven or eight hours, right?

BRYAN MROZ: For personal water, yeah.

STEVE GILLINGHAM: And that’s pretty much the only kind of break you're going to get. That’s one thing that you have to is just try to keep yourself as hydrated as possible. But these trucks, they run really efficient off fuel, so we get an entire night shift out of our aerial. When you go back to the evacuation centre and the staging area, there on Mac Island, you would refuel. That's the first thing you do. You take care of your truck first. You go back and you refuel and kind of take care of any issues with the equipment that you may be missing or that's broken.

BRYAN MROZ: They did have the mobile fuel guys driving around too. And they filled up our tanker for us. And then for a water supply for those trucks, we had the tenders. So, again, ones that aren't just designed to fill a fire truck. So, they were not as quick as, say, a fire truck tanker, but it was enough for us there.

AMT: Given the physical exertion and the sheer number of hours you're working, how do you physically just keep yourself moving? What do you do in your head to make yourself do that?

STEVE GILLINGHAM: Everyone's doing the same thing. I mean, you’re not going to see anybody sitting down and taking it easy when there's hundreds of people around you working. So you kind of feed off that.

BRYAN MROZ: It’s an adrenaline rush. Getting up there and just going to work, right, and not stopping.

AMT: So when you got in the truck and you came back here did you just, like, collapse?

MIKE CHYKA: I was driving back and, you know, it was a van with seven or eight people in it. The van was quiet, because everyone’s exhausted. You know, whether they were sleeping or not, it's just exhaustion and some guys-- And one guy had a Kleenex box, he had it against the glass and sleeping. That’s what it was, this pure exhaustion, sleeping. That’s the thing. Steve, again, talked about the support staff there. The fueling. We had mechanics there looking at all the trucks. They sent up mechanics from certain departments just to look at our trucks to make sure they were running okay. So, all those things get kind of lost. There was a volunteer at Mac Island just doing it on her own accord, making us sandwiches. Just walk up, here. Here’s a sandwich. Whatever you want, take it.

BRYAN MROZ: Slept outside on a cot to make sure—

STEVE GILLINGHAM: She’s a member of their Legion and she did not leave that point. We were there for what? Two and a half days and she’d sleep there at night on the bench and every time you walked by her she’d ask you if she could make you a sandwich.

AMT: Where did she come from? She just stayed?

MIKE CHYKA: She stayed. And I asked her, why are you doing this? She said, I’m just from this community. I want to help. I said, where are you staying? She goes, that cot right there.

STEVE GILLINGHAM: Betty was her name, right?

MIKE CHYKA: Yeah, I think so. Yeah. And we were walking by to relieve our crew. It was about 2:30 in the morning. I couldn’t see her, but she says, grab some sandwiches. I was like, where did that come from? Like, she’s on the cot behind the table. She was still awake even when she’s trying to get some sleep. Non-stop. Always had fresh coffee for us.

AMT: So even the logistics of fighting a fire like this with so many firefighters from so many different places, who's at the top of that pyramid? How does that actually even happen?

MIKE CHYKA: Well, I mentioned they have an emergency operation centre and we actually sent one of our command officers as well to help out with that so. And then they actually had sort of a mobile command at the staging area just to kind of summarize the point of contact for us. So we’d come back. We could say, hey, we fuelled our truck, our truck’s okay. Or if we had any issues, we’d tell him and then say, do you have any assignments for us? Where do you want us to go? So that's kind of how it works. We didn’t really see the full breadth of the of the command system, but that's how worked for us.

AMT: Will you go back?

MIKE CHYKA: 100 per cent.

BRYAN MROZ: Yeah.

MIKE CHYKA: Without a doubt.

STEVE GILLINGHAM: Absolutely.

MIKE CHYKA: I can assure you, everybody in this department wants to be there.

STEVE GILLINGHAM: Yeah, everybody wants to be there.

MIKE CHYKA: And so a group of us has gone. Other people want to go. So those people are going to get the opportunity to go as well. But, yeah, if given the opportunity, I know all of us will go again.

AMT: And that's how the rotation works? You go in and you work flat out with just tiny breaks and then you just keep working until you can't and then you’re replaced?

STEVE GILLINGHAM: Well, it's because people still got to get back to the regular duties, right. We could have stayed longer, but we got back Friday night. We had to be back here 8:00 Sunday morning for our regular shift. So, there’s still—I mean, obviously, our main goal is to protect St. Albert. So we come back, we do our shift , and if we get off—Is it Wednesday morning we get off tour? If they ask us to go back again, get home, pack a bag, and head back up there.

AMT: Gentleman, it's really important that we hear, really, what you go through to do this. Thank you for sharing your stories. Thank you for your work.

STEVE GILLINGHAM: Thank you.

MIKE CHYKA: Thanks.

BRYAN MROZ: Thanks.

AMT: Firefighters Steve Gillingham, Bryan Mroz, and Mike Chyka .We met earlier this week in the fire hall in St. Albert. Again they shared some of their photos with us, which you can see on our web site, cbc.ca/thecurrent. And you can listen to our full conversation online as well. You'll find our special edition of The Current: Alberta Under Fire also online and you'll hear the conversation with Lisa Hilsenteger. She is the school principal who got 15 children out of the fire zone. We also visited the community of Slave Lake where this fire resonates on a whole different level. Five years ago, a wildfire destroyed much of their community.

[Music: sting]

'Dr. Fire' concerned about toxicity risks in Fort McMurray

Guest: Vyto Babrauskas

AMT: Well, wildfires still rage through huge swaths of northern Alberta. We know there are fires in BC. In the news today, there are fires on the Manitoba-Ontario border. The fire has released much of its hold on Fort McMurray now, thanks to a combination of the hard work of firefighters and the cooling weather pattern. Not much is known about the effects of sustained exposure to ash and debris on frontline firefighters. As the provincial government says it will soon announce a rebuilding plan, some are also concerned that the charred city might still be too dangerous for returning residents as well. Vyto Babrauskas is a former fire safety researcher for the National Institute of Standards and Technology in the US. He taught at UBC. He now works as a fire science consultant in San Diego. And that's where we have reached him. Hello.

VYTO BABRAUSKAS: Good morning.

AMT: You've been listening to the firefighters who were on the front lines in Fort McMurray. What's your reaction to what they've been saying?

VYTO BABRAUSKAS: Well, it's very heart-breaking and, of course, you've got to be so appreciative of people putting in these superhuman efforts that all you can do is say thank you to them.

AMT: It is unusual for firefighters to face whole neighbourhoods going up in flames. They told us when they arrived they hadn't put their masks on yet. What could they have been exposed to?

VYTO BABRAUSKAS: Well, has been-- Firefighter health, due to chemical exposure, has been a very serious concern to some of us, but one with many questions and very few answers. You know, when something as simple- or you would think is simple - as wood burns, people have logged more 200 chemicals that come from burning wood into the air. And then most of them are not good to human beings, not good to other living things. How do you cope with that? And there's generally not easy answers.

AMT: How effective are the masks that firefighters typically wear?

VYTO BABRAUSKAS: Firefighter masks are generally pretty effective. And they're normally fitted well to the individual user. They're not some sort of one-size-fits-all. So, their air supply is good. And what our big concern is it's primarily not - assuming that they are using their breathing equipment as intended - it's not their breathing equipment, but their skin contact. Because they're all kinds of roots of some very toxic chemicals that can come in through skin exposure. And they are-- You say, yes, okay, they wear their bunker gear, they wear their boots, et cetera, but then you find out that, of course, this is not perfect. I mean, the hands get exposed as you're taking the gear off, as you're putting it on. They’re generally not washed except sporadically. So there are real concerns and the answers are nowhere near as satisfactory as we'd like.

AMT: Well, you know, after 9/11 comedian Jon Stewart helped lead the fight for health care benefits for the first responders to the World Trade Center. Many, we know now, faced a variety of ailments years after. What do we know about long term health risks associated with being a firefighter?

VYTO BABRAUSKAS: Well, that's the very sad part. We generally know that you are at elevated risk of cancers of various sorts and that, of course, is something that is very alarming, very sad to know for firefighters. And the other thing that we're aware of is that the research is just wholly inadequate. In other words, there’s primarily statistical studies that you see that there done that somebody will take a cohort of a firefighter somewhere and compare it to the incidence of diseases to non-firefighters of similar age, sex, et cetera, group and draw some conclusion and that’s fine. It gets us baseline information. But what about the mechanics of the actual process, about how those chemicals get introduced inappropriately into these persons’ bodies and how that whole sequence happens until there is an outbreak of something like cancer. And for that you just have to speculate and say, hey, we want that have this study. We want the health to be preserved for these hard working individuals and why aren't we doing something more useful?

AMT: It's interesting. You say there's just not a lot of study. Because I want to also ask about the potential risks associated with the charred remains of a home for returning residents or those maybe going to work there. There was just a job there in Edmonton on Tuesday. They're looking for 500 people to clear debris and rebuild homes. What kinds of toxic chemicals could exist on site after this kind of a fire?

VYTO BABRAUSKAS: Well, the toxic chemicals is subdivided basically into two big categories. What's in the air and what’s in particulate matter? Now, for the gases that are in the air, that can be, from a preventive point of view, that can be handled pretty easily. What you do is you bring on a carbon monoxide meter and measuring carbon monoxide kind of acts as a surrogate for measuring all of the other gases, which generally you’re not equipped to measure. But what you do is you go and take a reading with the carbon monoxide meter of the air and if that basically doesn't move off zero mark of the scale, there's no issue with exposure to the air.

AMT: Okay. I'm going to move you forward because we're almost at a time. Can you just spell out for me what the dangers might be?

VYTO BABRAUSKAS: The dangers might be that they're going to encounter dioxins, furans, all sorts of exotic hydrocarbons, and that these are chemicals which can lead to cancer. Those gases can get adsorbed, in other words, stuck on the surface of soot particles and debris, and if that gets through your skin, that enters into the human being, you can be exposed to toxic materials and you can be then at an increased risk for some disease, but especially notably for cancer-type diseases.

AMT: So, in fact, if they’re sending 500 people in to clear debris and help rebuild, what kind of safety precaution should they be taking?

VYTO BABRAUSKAS: They basically should be taking the safety precautions of a chemical worker who is exposed to nasty chemicals in and industrial context and suits that are appropriate to that, washing procedures, and , of course, everything else. Certainly, don't eat your lunch as you are in the workplace.

AMT: What about the people who want to get to get to their homes that might be partially damaged or even standing, but have been through all that smoke?

VYTO BABRAUSKAS: That is an exceedingly difficult question. I mean, they should really be subjected to the same protocol. In other words, if we want to make sure that they don't get injured from toxic materials, they really need to be in the chemical suit. Now, obviously, the average household does not have such equipment, so what do you say? The only thing I can say is that there are remediation contractors who do have that equipment, who do protect their personnel, and somehow to enlist the services of those folks, that's really the best thing I can think of.

AMT: There are a lot of unknowns still, huh?

VYTO BABRAUSKAS: Yes. Yes, indeed. And to researchers like me, that is a very vexing thing and when it comes to health and longevity of firefighters there's an emotional charge associated with that too.

AMT: So the health risks faced by the firefighters can be faced by those going back in quickly as well and even when the fire is out?

VYTO BABRAUSKAS: Exactly. Exactly. And the last thing that you want to do as a householder is simply get in there and start mucking around in debris without chemical protection, because you are potentially exposed to things that might be very, very unhealthy for you.

AMT: It's really important to hear about this. Thank you very much for talking to me today.

VYTO BABRAUSKAS: Thank you.

AMT: That is Vyto Babrauskas. He runs the consulting firm Fire Science and Technology Incorporated. We have we reached him in San Diego, California. Let us know what you think of what he's saying about the risks associated with what is left behind after fires like that. We are @thecurrentCBC on Twitter. You can find us on our website, cbc.ca/thecurrent. Click on the Contact, the Contac icon, I guess. I’m Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current on CBC Radio One, Sirius XM, and online on cbc.ca/thecurrent.

[Music: theme]

Squash champion Maria Toorpakai disguised herself as a boy to play sports in Pakistan

Guests: Maria Toorpakai

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Hello, I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and this is The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: balls being hit, sneakers squeaking on floor]

Attack. Volley if you can. Lift. Move up. Snap. If you can snap that ball, get up there, snap it. Wrong foot. Get that right foot. There you go. Volley. Good. All the way back. Set your feet.

AMT: That is Canadian squash pro Jonathon Power training Pakistan women's champion, Maria Toorpakai captured by HBO sports in 2013. It's been a long journey from Pakistan to Toronto for the elite athlete. When Maria Toorpakai was a young girl in south Waziristan in Pakistan's tribal lands, she longed to play sports with the boys, but in a fundamentalist part of Pakistan her dream could have easily led to death. Instead Maria Toorpakai overcame restrictions on girls and women by disguising herself and living publicly as a boy. She went on to become Pakistan's number one ranked female squash player. She tells her story in a book, A Different Kind of Daughter: The Girl who Hid from the Taliban in Plain Sight. Maria Toorpakai joins me in our Toronto studio. Hi.

MARIA TOORPAKAI: Hi.

AMT: [laughs] I can hear the force of that ball just without even seeing anything.

MARIA TOORPAKAI: Amazing.

AMT: Do you spend a lot of time with Jonathon?

MARIA TOORPAKAI: I do.

AMT: Learning and improving all the time, yes?

MARIA TOORPAKAI: Oh, definitely.

AMT: When you were growing up, how did you know that you were different from other girls in your community?

MARIA TOORPAKAI: You know, I was really strong and I had a lot of energy. I was very aggressive and also you see a lot of girls, you know, there is very limited space for them. From a young age they have to stay home, not allowed to go outside that far but when you see guys, they have more space, a more unlimited area to play and hang out and I see those differences, and then I see guys have more happiness and good energy and the girls are like dull, just sitting there and just working and serving the families. From a young age, they are covering themselves from five or six years old and they don’t know why they are doing it but they are told to do it and also, I have to look after their siblings. So I just realized it's more fun as a boy and that's when I was four-and-a-half I realized that and the only way to get into the group of boys and play freely outside, I had to burn all my girly dresses and that was a turning point.

AMT: Let's talk about that because you were just four-and-a-half. Tell us what you did.

MARIA TOORPAKAI: So my dad and mom, actually they were outside, they were gone somewhere and when they came home, they found me by the pile of fire in the backyard, and I was standing in my brother's clothes and my dad just looked at me and he kept staring at me and the fire and he could see that it was all the dresses that I had.

AMT: So you went and you took every dress you had, you were a little girl, you had beautiful dresses, they had beautiful thread on them, they had little pearls and little sequins on them and you put them all in a pile?

MARIA TOORPAKAI: Yeah, I did. I liked more simple clothes like boys and have a more loose clothing style.

AMT: And so you drag out the kerosene and you—

MARIA TOORPAKAI: I did that and I knew where my mom cooks and where is the fire, so I managed to burn all my clothes.

AMT: You also cut your hair. You had long hair.

MARIA TOORPAKAI: I did [laughs]. I tried and it tuned out really bad but then my father took me to a barber.

AMT: But to do that at four-and-a-half, you had a feeling internally that you just didn't want to be constricted by the life of a little girl. Already you knew that.

MARIA TOORPAKAI: Yeah, well you know, I just could see that happiness outside and to get there I just couldn't stop myself from burning the clothes. There was just so much passion just to do it and that's why I did it. My father just realized that you know, I'm different and he called me his fifth son and from that day I grew up with Ghengis Khan name.

AMT: So tell me about the part of Pakistan where you're from, Waziristan.

MARIA TOORPAKAI: This area had become very violent with time and it became a help to terrorist organizations. The problem is that we never allowed ourselves to be exposed to the outside world, or get education, or get any information. People do not watch TV or radio-- men do that but women, they're not allowed to do anything like that.

AMT: It’s a very conservative, traditional society.

MARIA TOORPAKAI: Your entire life, you would see women live there in the house and they shouldn't be heard outside and if they are seen outside, it should be with the husband, but without a husband, it can get really upsetting among the families. And if she is found guilty of doing something wrong, she is shot on place and I've seen some girls who didn't want to marry; some girls who didn't want to go for the arranged marriage; I've seen girls who want to go to school, but it never happened because the parents were not supportive because of the society and because of the traditions that keep going for centuries. It was all about honour and respect and it is a very male dominated society so, for me, three things are very important: property, land and women. They have to protect that, they will die for that, or kill people for that.

AMT: And into this very traditional society is your father. What is your father's perspective on women's rights?

MARIA TOORPAKAI: My father, when he was young he went to a different city he met some hippies out there. He watched some Hollywood movies with them like Sean Connery or Elvis Presley, and those hippies were from Europe and different places and they became really good friends. Then my father researched things, learned thing, books, you know and he kind of realized that what we are doing is not the right path. We have to change in a certain way, and it is taking all the things that we are doing as we are going backwards. So, he started doing the things that were completely the opposite to this society and he found peace in that. He kept telling people that he started doing poetry, revolutionary poetry, and telling people about women’s rights, humanity, and what we can do better for our culture and society. Lots of elders and people became really against him when he was talking. They thought he was talking against Islam and religion so they outcast him. He ran, he escaped from them. Many people started stoning him, put him in a mental jail once, no twice, and he was also tied up without clothes in a mud room for weeks.

AMT: So your mother is a very special person as well. Tell us about her.

MARIA TOORPAKAI: I feel that my mom and dad coming together was kind of written I think, because my mom also was very hard working, she always loved to get education and when she was young, she was the only one in her family that got education. She used to walk miles on foot to the school, get there and come back, and there used to be sometimes one bus so if you miss that, you miss it and you have to walk, so it was like that.

AMT: And of course, as we go on in your story, your mom is teaching in schools in Waziristan and these are the very schools that the Taliban end up attacking and bombing. They are very much against women teaching and they're very much against girls going to those schools, so to be the daughter of two people like that in that society is very different.

MARIUA TOORPAKAI: Yes. The thing is, Taliban have the same mentality as our people have and that's very easy for the Taliban to stay there, live there, and rule and recruit people. That's why it's a very dangerous place.

AMT: Well and you know, you talk about the danger and violence against girls and women; this is not an abstract idea for you. You have instances in the book where you are attacked by Islamic fundamentalists. Tell us what you went through.

MARIA TOORPAKAI: I was young and some guys are playing volleyball and a lot of men they all look the same and they look like mullahs and some of them were mullahs from the mosque, but they were playing this volleyball and then I really want to touch the ball. I went out and when I touched the ball, they actually saw me and they got really angry.

AMT: You actually—

MARIA TOORPAKAI: Yes.

AMT: The ball came toward you. You were how old?

MARIA TOORPAKAI: I was four, I think.

AMT: So you wanted to touch the ball but you actually spiked it back to them.

MARIA TOORPAKAI: Yeah, yeah.

AMT: And when you did that, what happened?

MARIA TOORPAKAI: Well, the guy came to me and looked at me and I had a girly dress and hair, but then this man when he came to me, he hit me really badly on my face. As a child, it was very hard for me—

AMT: He slapped you really hard?

MARIA TOORPAKAI: Yes, it was really hard for me.

AMT: More than once. He held your face and your hands and he slapped you.

MARIA TOORPAKAI: Yes, and they were laughing, too. They were smiling and they were slapping and they were like, what are you doing here? You go now. You go home, and then they hit me again and again. For them it was fun.

AMT: So, for the people who did that because they were angry at you for not being like a traditional girl, you knew the dangers of that as you got older and yet you really still wanted to play with the boys. Why?

MARIA TOORPAKAI: Well, I'll tell you. In Waziristan, what happened before, I started dressing up like guys. It was also because of my dad what the reaction was from people towards me, towards my siblings, or to my dad, that’s why we kept moving from area to area. As a boy—people didn’t know I was a girl after that—

AMT: How did you do that? How did you disguise yourself?

MARIA TOORPAKAI: I looked very, if you look at the picture then, I do not look like a girl in there. I was very strong and very masculine, and powerful, and aggressive, too, and I thought the more angry you are, the more you look like a man [giggles], all those kinds of things. I tried to be like a man, and I became one of them. I started playing sports, and people came to know I was a girl because I was in that age where girls change physically, so it was not easy to hide myself anymore.

AMT: Tell us about Ghengis Khan.

MARIA TOORPAKAI: I had a lot of fun in tribal areas as a boy, as a Ghengis Khan.

AMT: That's what you called yourself?

MARIA TOORPAKAI: Yes. And I was the strongest of boys. I was challenging all the time and I was always found in the middle of fights.

AMT: At one point you write that you would leap from one building to the other in a compound because you could. You literally had that much energy to run and jump. You’d leap from compound to compound to compound.

MARIA TOORPAKAI: Trust me. I have climbed the mountains, I have climbed the trees, I have climbed, in one place we used to live, like a city kind of area, so we used to climb on the pipes that go up to the top of the building. I used to climb through those pipes and then jump from the roof to the roof, so it was like so much energy [giggles].

AMT: Well, you actually competed against boys in weightlifting as Ghengis Khan.

MARIA TOORPAKAI: Yeah, yeah I did. The first sport was weightlifting for me and I was really strong, so after a couple of months I went to a weightlifting championship with all the boys, with a group of boys. We lived in the same room, we were lying down in a row and my brother was there to protect me so we kind of worked around the situation.

AMT: And they never figured it out?

MARIA TOORPAKAI: One time we got stuck a little bit. I thought that when I saw that all the boys had to take off their clothes and they have to weigh their body in order to participate, under 50 kilograms, under 70 kilograms, so all the boys were competing accordingly and when I saw that, I told my brother there is something wrong, we should do something about it, and he was worried about that, too. Then he, we thought we would make a plan. First, we went and said he’s not going to do it and he refused. There was another guy who was really shy, my brother got him on board too, and he said, are you going to go after me? So, my brother refused, and he refused and I refused. I said I was very shy, too [laughs]. The committee, the board there, they kept looking at us and said okay, let them do it with clothes, and that’s how we participated in the competition.

AMT: How did you become a squash player?

MARIA TOORPAKAI: During the weightlifting, when I had break time, I used to go to this squash court and I used to see the boys playing and it looked like it was really a lot of fun to me, hitting the ball. And you just heard that, how amazing it is by just by listening to the sound of the ball. So, it was so much fun, but as soon as I start leaving the squash court and go back to the weightlifting, I just felt so alone and it was boring because, especially after winning that weightlifting championship, I saw nothing else coming up and I was looking for a challenge. I’m lifting weights and I don’t see anything after that, but in squash, I think there are so many people and so much fun. I went to my dad and said I want to play squash and he actually really liked my idea because after weightlifting, he found me more going outside and staying there and walking like a body builder and fighting and stuff. He found me more in the middle of fights so he realized it is a really good idea to put her in squash and it will help her reduce her anger and she will start hitting a ball instead of fighting people.

AMT: Did you compete against boys as Ghengis Khan at first with squash?

MARIA TOORPAKAI: My dad and I tried to introduce myself as a Ghengis Khan, but that was a proper squash academy, so I had to present my birth certificate to enroll, and that’s how I had no option but to come out as Maria Toorpakai.

AMT: And how did the revelation that you were actually Maria, and not Ghengis Khan, sit with the others?

MARIA TOORPAKAI: Because of squash, I got into, I came into the, in the light, you know--

AMT: The spotlight.

MARIA TOORPAKAI: The spotlight. But then, I come from the same tribe, which is half the Taliban and the Taliban are, you know you would hardly recognize who is Taliban and who is not because everyone looks the same and everyone has the same ideology, and then they found out I am their own blood, their own girl is doing such a shameful thing playing in skirts and shorts and out there in front of people without any scarf playing squash. Because of them, we got threats right away. My mom, my dad, everyone got the threats of death and they asked my father to relearn Islam, I have to stop playing squash as soon as possible, and they do not want to see anyone from my family out there, otherwise they will kill us. When the Taliban threatened us, I was still—it was something that was real and nobody could just protect themselves, it wasn’t safe anymore. In the beginning we tried to change the number plates of the car, going out at different times. There was a squash court actually, that I found which was abandoned, it was closed for ages and—

AMT: An outdoor court?

MARIA TOORPAKAI: Yes. It had this lock which was rusted and me and my brother broke the lock and went inside. The floor was really bad. It was like half of the squash court was broken, so the side wall was not there. We used to play in the middle, we cleaned inside, we put the lines in there, and played in that specific spot on the squash court at nighttime.

AMT: Where no one could find you.

MARIA TOORPAKAI: I used to go at 11 pm, yes.

AMT: So, clearly you were devoted to squash but I want to ask you, how long have you been in Toronto now?

MARIA TOORPAKAI: Five years.

AMT: You describe those moments when you have to be hyper-aware for your own safety in Peshawar. When you walk down the streets in Toronto today, what do you think of the difference?

MARIA TOORPAKAI: I am not afraid. I am not bullied. I can be who I am. There is so much freedom, I’m not expecting anything bad, you know? All of my expectations are good and positive, while in Peshawar, I have to plan ahead of time how am I going to walk, where am I going to go, what am I going to do, all different things. Your brain would blow up with all those measurements, but here I just go with-- I have no plan, I just go, have fun, I know everything is all right.

AMT: So how did you end up leaving Pakistan and coming to Toronto?

MARIA TOORPAKAI: In 2007, when I got threats from Taliban and I said it was real and I had to make a decision about whether I wanted to play squash or not. But, looking at all the sacrifices that my parents have done for us and I don't want my parents to lose their child at the end, I don't want that in the end for them. Also, it would be a very dishonourable thing if my father lost a daughter, kidnapped by Taliban. And Taliban tortures people to the extreme. I have heard, I have seen people, some of our friends, I mean some of the people we knew, not friends, some of the people we knew, they were kidnapped and then we heard and we saw the pictures in the newspaper when their bodies were thrown into the market and they had no limbs and no eyes and no ears, so you can see how they were tortured. I had to make a decision. A few times, I used to think of having a cyanide pill, or maybe have a gun, so if they take me down, I take them down with me. One good person, but many bad people [nervous laughter], I take them. I never did that.

AMT: Instead, you sent emails out.

MARIA TOORPAKAI: Instead, I stopped going out. For three and a half years, I stayed home and I kept playing squash in my room against my bedroom wall. I realized, my father realized, that I am not going to give up on squash, I really love it. He told me that, you know, you should leave the country. That’s the only way for you to play squash. Then I started emailing all over the world, offering them my service as a part-time coach, asking them for a place where I could train myself, for peace of mind. After three and a half years, I got a message and that was Jonathon Power. He sent me a message, it was 7 pm, I think. I got really excited, it was an unbelievable thing to message that I am Jonathon Power and I will train you and make you a champion.

AMT: Who is Jonathon Power?

MARUA TOORPAKAI: He is a world champion [laughs]. He is from Canada and he's a unique player in the world.

AMT: And he answered your email?

MARIA TOORPAKAI: He answered my email after three and half years, that was the only reply I got.

AMT: And he just kept training, so you’ve been training for five years with him?

MARIA TOORPAKAI: He was really excited when he saw me, like I am really good, but then he realized that I'm really injured. My nervous system was really disturbed, and I was getting a lot of injuries like muscular pains, so he kind of got me a lot of doctors and that was the first time I have seen a doctor because in my life, I had never been to a doctor. He took me to doctors and it took almost three years to feel like a human. I have not felt like a human before, I was in so much pain.

AMT: So what lessons do you hope boys and girls in Pakistan will take from your experience?

MARIA TOORPAKAI: I think the strongest man is who empowers a girl, a woman, and the strongest woman always respects a man. It’s a mutual thing and you have to come together and save the world.

AMT: Maria, you have an amazing story. Thank you for coming in.

MARIA TOORPAKAI: Thank you.

AMT: Maria Toorpakai is the author of A Different Kind of Daughter: The Girl who Hid from the Taliban in Plain Sight. She joined us in our Toronto studio. That's our program for today. We're going to give today's last word to the Edmonton Journal's Paula Simons with a message firefighters would surely endorse. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti, thanks for listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

On Thursday, the city of Edmonton impose da complete fire ban, that's a ban on open fires. I'm not sure what part of this Edmonton you don't understand because between Thursday and Sunday, city fire crews had to respond to 110 complaints of backyard open fire pits. That's in addition to responding to 217 brush and grass fires, all of which were caused by human beings. So, I know I'm not your mother, well unless you're my kid watching, but think of me as Edmonton's official Jewish mother and I'm going to make this very simple for you: do not start any fires. Do not have a fire pit this week. Do not go to the park and have a wiener roast. Do not throw your cigarette butts out the window. Do not throw your roach clips into the bush. Capisce? Is this plain? Don't start any fires, because quite frankly, The Edmonton Fire Department has enough to do fires here and in Fort McMurray without cleaning up after your mistakes. This is been a Paula Simon’s Jewish mother public service announcement.

[Music: Extro]

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May 11, 2016 full episode transcript

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