November 27th, 2011

So today is a day I won't soon forget that's for sure! Today was the day that I was initiated into the Delta Eta Iota sorority, but my day was memorable for very different and somewhat terrifying reasons. Throughout the morning and early afternoon, we were getting reports of the awful wind in Calgary and here in Lethbridge. Windows in office buildings in downtown Calgary were being blown in, they even shut down the downtown core at one point. Semi trucks were being blown over like they were made of paper, siding and roofs were being ripped off; it was truly terrifying. The wind here wasn't as bad. Only a little bit stronger than normal but there were tops of trees blowing about.

Later on, while Meagan and I were getting ready for our initiation, my friend Alicia walked in and said there was a funny colored cloud outside. So I'm not particularly concerned, more nervous about my initiation than anything but then we find out there's a wildfire just west of Lethbridge. Meagan and I then get a text from Jade, the President of the sorority telling us to get out of the city and go to her house in Coalhurst, so we jumped into the car and went straight to Coalhurst. We had to stop at Safeway on the west side before going because we were running out of gas. It took three of us to push open the car door so Meagan could get out an fill up. And everything was orange and hazy. It looked like something out of a natural disaster movie where everything is grossly exaggerated.

While we were driving to Coalhurst, we could see the fire from the highway. It was one of the scariest moments of my life, the wind was also so strong we almost blew off the road! I had never heard an Alberta warning before, its scarier than being beside the fire! It starts with a super annoying, obnoxious and anxiety-inducing buzzard then an automated woman's voice announces whatever's going on. I wasn't really scared until I heard that. Once we were at Jade's, she was running around trying to make sure everyone got here safe, then we spent a good hour watching the news, trying to get information about what was going on but the news was more concerned about elderly women in Quebec. At one point we got reports that the University had been evacuated, but my friend on DE4 texted me and told me that that was untrue. Jade was ready to grab sleeping bags from the garage for us and have us spend the night there. At about 8 p.m. we all got really hungry and since we hadn't started initiations yet we carpooled over to Coyotes, a gas station restaurant in Coalhurst. It was really nice to go out to supper as a sorority. Apparently that's going to be a new tradition. After we had supper it was about time to start initiations (which I can't really tell you anything about), after initiations, (which ended at 11 p.m.) it was time to go home. The threat for Lethbridge had passed and Jade was comfortable with letting us leave. Meagan, Kelsey and I went and picked up Meagan's friend Brandon before we came back to UHall, he was on the west side so it wasn't too far out of the way. All of Rez now smells like smoke, and I have a massive headache from it but we're all okay, everyone's home safe, ready for classes in the morning.