Volume 7 • 2020 • Issue 3

burned down,” he says. “It was eerie. A house right on the very edge of absolute nothingness.” He remembers the landscape coated with fire retardant. Cars burned down to their chassis. “It was like a ghost town when we came back,” says Dr. Tran. “Inside our house, we could smell the smoke. The trees in the backyard were burnt. It came very, very close.” In late March 2020, when Dr. Tran and Dr. Heinzelman spoke with CDA Essentials , the two men were uneasy about the COVID-19 crisis. They have a lot of the same concerns they had during the summer of 2016; they are worried about their staff and how to navigate uncertainty. “It is hard on all small businesses right now,” says Heinzelman. “In many cases, revenues have gone to zero, but the landlord still needs rent.” They are unsure about how insurance and government money might help, or if it will. “We know what wildfires are like,” says Dr. Tran. “But this pandemic is new.” In July and August of 2016, the two dentists sorted through the supplies at their businesses. Some had been damaged by the smoke and were discarded and reordered. Smoke-damaged ceiling tiles had to be replaced. Insurance payments for two of the practices had gone smoothly, but the payments for UptownDental Centre took a while so Dr. Tran had to pay out-of-pocket to get the business ready to re-open and then wait for reimbursement. Staff members slowly came back to the city. Both dental practices were open by mid-August, and Timberlea Services Centre by mid-September. “A non-hospital surgical facility has the same standards as a hospital,” says Dr. Heinzelman. “Our HEPA filters had to be checked and there were more stringent protocols, which took some extra time.” Did surviving a crisis change the way the two dentists planned for the future? “It’s smart to have cash on hand, in case of a crisis,” says Dr. Heinzelman, “but that said, we’ve been injecting everything into our businesses to help them recover over the last few years.” It took a while for business to return to normal because not all Fort McMurray residents came back at once. Indeed, Dr. Heinzelman estimates that 10% of the population The estimated cost of the fire, which continued to smoulder until the summer of 2017, was about $10 billion. In the years since, Fort McMurray has recovered. “People talk about the fire still, but we’ve moved on from it,” says Dr. Tran. Photo: Jason Woodhead, May 1, 2016_flickr_creative commons I ssues and P eople 20 | 2020 | Issue 3