\n Miiyah remembers the escape itself being just as terrifying as the fire.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cIt was very scary,\u201d she said. \u201cThere were quite a few times I felt like we were about to tip.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
![\"Collins](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/c-fire-picture.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n 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.\n <\/p>\n
\n Miiyah\u2019s mother, Chief Helen Paavola, wasn\u2019t 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.\n <\/p>\n
\n Chief Paavola remembers the moments of agony when she couldn\u2019t reach members of the community during the evacuation, including her daughter and two sons.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cAll I could think was \u2026 they\u2019re gone. My children are gone. My community is gone,\u201d she told CNN. \u201cThere are no words to explain the relief that I felt when I knew everybody was out.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n But just like all other houses in Collins First Nation, her home was completely destroyed by the fires.\n <\/p>\n
\n 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.\n <\/p>\n
\n The destruction of Collins has become one of the starkest examples of the devastation caused by this week\u2019s fires.\n <\/p>\n
\n 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.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cIf they waited for an emergency response,\u201d she said, \u201cwe would all be on a recovery mission looking for the bodies of children, elderly people, men and women.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n 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.\n <\/p>\n
\n She says Collins has fallen through jurisdictional cracks because it is considered a \u201cnear band,\u201d a community still working toward full federal recognition, complicating access to government support.\n <\/p>\n
\n 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.\n <\/p>\n
\n The destruction of Collins has renewed questions about whether Ontario\u2019s wildfire strategy is keeping pace with increasingly intense fire seasons.\n <\/p>\n
\n 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.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cThis is the first time, in my knowledge, that communities within a three-hour drive of Thunder Bay have had to be evacuated,\u201d she told CNN.\n <\/p>\n
\n 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.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cIt\u2019s become acceptable somehow that First Nations communities get evacuated every year,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s traumatizing, and I\u2019m sure the effects will be with people for a very long time.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Even communities outside the immediate fire zone are feeling the impact.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cThunder Bay has ash falling down and the air quality is quite bad,\u201d Vaugeois said.\n <\/p>\n
\n The smoke has spread hundreds of miles beyond northwestern Ontario, affecting people far from the fire line. Toronto, Canada\u2019s 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.\n <\/p>\n
\n For those with respiratory issues, the effects are much more grueling. That\u2019s the case for Scott Bailey, a resident of Belleville, Ontario, who has Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD).\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cThe last two days have been severely hazy out. It\u2019s been like nine o\u2019clock at night every day, for the whole day,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n
\n For Bailey, living with a chronic lung disease means every change in air quality matters. While inhaling isn\u2019t his biggest challenge, his lungs struggle to expel carbon dioxide. Smoke-filled air makes that even harder.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cIt\u2019s like breathing through a straw,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cWhen you breathe polluted air full of smoke like this, it makes it a lot worse. There\u2019s a lot of molecules and stuff in the air because of the forest fires. It\u2019s just not the smoke \u2013 there\u2019s lots of stuff in the smoke,\u201d he explained.\n <\/p>\n
\n The worsening air quality means significant changes to his daily routine.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cMy wife loves to have the windows open during the summer, but that\u2019s the first thing we stop doing,\u201d Bailey said. \u201cYou need clean air ventilation, and you\u2019ve got to have air purifiers and your oxygen near you.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Even simple errands now require planning, and he is avoiding leaving his home.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cYou have to plan things like going grocery shopping or going to someone\u2019s house. You have to make sure your car has air circulation, so the air is fresh.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n It\u2019s unclear when the fires will die out and the air will clear.\n <\/p>\n
\n For the people of Collins, the smoke hanging over Ontario is only a reminder of what they left behind.\n <\/p>\n
\n Chief Paavola says her community is grieving what they have lost. \u201cThere\u2019s despair, there\u2019s confusion, there\u2019s hurt, there\u2019s mourning, but there\u2019s hope.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n She says there has never been any doubt about what comes next.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cWe are going home,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to rebuild, and we are going home.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At first, all Miiyah Paavola could see was a thick wall of smoke. From her home in Namaygoosisagagun…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":809648,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[49,48,44],"class_list":["post-809647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=809647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809647\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/809648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=809647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=809647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=809647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}