When dogs, lizards and goats arrived at the oilsands

Amidstthe commotion of FortMcMurrayevacuees flooding into the lobby of Shell'sAlbianSandsoilsandscamp during last year's wildfire, GrantZellwegernoticed a strange smell.

A few other Shell staff noticed it too, but couldn'tpinpoint what wasreeking up the room. Eventually Zellwegertracked it down to some cratescovered by a blanket. He lifted up a corner and discovered seven lizards of various sizes in openplastic containers.

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Zellwegerfound the owner and quickly found the reptiles aroom, fearingchaos in the crowded lobby if the lizards escaped.

Chatting with the owner, he figuredout the source of theodour.

"The smell was the food. The food for the lizards, well, they ate bats, mice and things like that that were frozen and were thawing out. That's where the smell was coming out," recallsZellweger, who manages theAlbianSands facilities.

Over 1,800 kgs of dog food

Whenpeople from FortMcMurrayfled north to theoilsandscamps during last year's massive wildfire, facilities not only had to preparefood and water for evacuees, but also for the thousands of pets brought along during the mass evacuation.

Initially, there was some thought to separate the pets and house them in a different locationfor safety and sanitary reasons. However, it was decided people were already stressed out from the evacuation and taking away their beloved pets wouldonly add to the anxiety.

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"One of the first emergency response calls I was part of, they asked 'what do you need at the village?,'" saysZellweger."We got lucky with the food already, we had all of that, we had the basic needs for the people. But we never had anything for the animals. So the first request was 'I need dog food.'"

Theinitialorder wasmore than 1,800 kilograms.

Every animal imaginable

Talk to just about anyone who was at theoilsandscamps during the evacuation one year ago and undoubtedly the conversation turns to animals.

There were dogs roaming the baseball fields at Canadian Natural Resources' Horizon facility andcats wonderingthe lobby atSuncor'sFirebagcamp. Don't forget the birds, snakes and turtles.

"Not having fed kids or pets on site [before], it was something we had to move quickly on," says Suncor's Jeff Eichenlaud, who remembers the dilemma of getting kitty litter shipped in.

Goats and even a horse showed up atSyncrude'ssite.

"There was a significant diversity, let's say, of animals on our site at the time," says Mal Carroll with theoilsandscompany.

He remembers seeing one particular family with an exceptionally distressed cat that was sinking its claws into its owners. As engineers, Mal and a few others looked around for spare materials and quickly built a makeshift crate for the cat. The family was relieved as the sharp claws recoiled.

Flying fido home

After figuring out how tofeed and house the eclecticgroup ofanimals, the next challenge was sending the pets home with their families.

At first,oilsandsstaff convinced airlines to allowthem to travel on the laps of their owners, basically like a carry-on item.

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"That's the Noah's Ark flights, the first couple of them," says Dan Drew, the head of security at AlbianSands. "These people have lost everything and all they have left is their pets, in some casesthe kids they had with them.Some people didn't even have a wallet. So we asked the air crew if they would take the pets on board and they did."

That's the Noah's Ark flights, the first couple of them... we asked the air crew if they would take the pets on board and they did.- Dan Drew, Shell

Pictures emerged on social media of cats, dogsand even a hedgehog spending time in the cabin at 30,000 feet.

In the meantime,oilsandscompanies were sending staff in Calgary and Edmonton to stores in order to buy as many cat and dog carriers as they couldfind to be loaded onto planes headed to FortMcMurraytoairlift evacuees."One thing Shell didis purchase probably the majority of animal crates in the province of Alberta and have them delivered toAlbian," saysZellweger.

Those crates were laterdonated to non-profit groups.

Caring for a pet of any type always requires a certain amount of cleanup and it was no different in theoilsands.Thedorm rooms at theAlbianSands camprequired three weeks of thorough scrubbing to remove all the hair and other animal remnants.