Brooke Kindel never thought she’d be preparing to have a baby while also being displaced by a wildfire.
But at 35 weeks pregnant, Kindel watched her neighbourhood in Denare Beach, Sask., go up in flames.
“We lost everything except for our skid steer,” she told CTV News.
Kindel and her neighbours tracked the fire through home cameras and their vehicle app.
“We still had our Tesla in the driveway, so we watched the temperature just rise astronomically until it started on fire. That’s kind of how we knew that our property was for sure gone,” she said.
Last week, Kindel and her family fled their home in the northern Saskatchewan village of Denare Beach, 20 kilometres south-west of Flin Flon, Man. They are staying with family in Saskatoon.
This is the first time they have ever had to evacuate.
“There’s a lot of stress. There’s a lot of fear. There’s a lot of confusion,” she said.
Late last week, Kindel said she went into prodromal labour (false labour). She’s been experiencing contractions ever since.
“They’re (the doctors) thinking that it’s just the stress of everything going on,” she said.
More than 400 homes and structures have been lost due to wildfires in 2025, according to Saskatchewan officials. The largest destruction happened in Denare Beach.
A total of at least 9,000 people have fled their homes in Saskatchewan due to wildfires this year. Saskatchewan’s premier estimates that number could grow to 15,000 as the most recent evacuees continue to register at evacuation centres.
Kindel said she registered, but still hasn’t heard back.
She doesn’t know when she will be able to return to her home community, and where her family will live once they can.
“It’s really nerve-wracking. We’re waiting to hear back from insurance,” she said.
Now that Kindel knows the outcome of her community, she’s worried for others who are still holding out hope.
“We’ve already had to go through the hard part now of watching it burn and knowing that it’s happening. I just feel really bad for everybody else with all the uncertainty that they have, because it’s a really horrible feeling.”
As of Tuesday, 20 active wildfires were burning across the province, eight of which were considered not contained.
