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O'Neill is the operations manager of the Recovery Task Force of the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo.Greg Halinda

Erin O'Neill was away at an urban-planning conference the day an out-of-control wildfire hit her community – forcing a mass evacuation and destroying 2,400 homes and buildings. But, even before the May, 2016, blaze was extinguished, Ms. O'Neill was back at the municipality's emergency operations centre to plan the re-entry for tens of thousands of residents. The 34-year-old originally from Ottawa hasn't stopped in the months since and is now overseeing Fort McMurray's massive rebuilding efforts.

Tell me a bit about yourself. How did you end up with the job of rebuilding Fort McMurray?

I'm an urban planner by trade. I was working in land administration, looking after the municipality's real estate interests before the fire. When the fire happened, the director of emergency management called me up and said, "Erin, come back to Fort McMurray." So I arrived in Fort McMurray and he said, "You're looking after re-entry." So I did re-entry. And I've just moved along and continued on the recovery task force and now, I'm looking after the rebuild.

When you look back on the events of May 3 and the early days of the fire, what do you think about?

It was the unknown. I was not in Fort McMurray when the fire was happening. We really had no idea what was going on so we were reliant, much like everyone else was, on Twitter updates or news updates. And you really just had this feeling that you were going to wake the next day and not have anything. I remember going to bed on May 3 and thinking, "Okay, I'm going to wake up tomorrow and absolutely have nothing left, in terms of a home or anything you have in your home." I actually remember thinking there wouldn't be a Fort McMurray when I woke up on May 4.

There will be hundreds of new homes and buildings constructed this spring. You also need to rebuild parks, municipal facilities, infrastructure, schools and make sure forest-fire mitigation measures are in place. How do you manage such a massive construction site while allowing people to continue their everyday lives?

We have a rebuild plan and the main tenet of our rebuild plan is a construction management team. And that will see co-ordinators in each of the destroyed areas so they can co-ordinate with the contractors, they can co-ordinate with the homeowners, they can ensure things are being done in a safe, compliant and efficient manner. We are working on mitigation measures to make sure that the community becomes more resilient. Council has approved looking at the predesign for another highway which will provide additional access out of town. We're working at FireSmart principles. And then we also need to rebuild some of our playgrounds that were destroyed, some of the trails that were destroyed and green spaces and make sure we minimize the additional damage that is caused from the rebuild to any of our public spaces.

What are some of the hidden financial costs of the fire – ones that you or others might have never expected?

One of the major ones is the amount of damage that's done after the fire. During demolition, some municipal water installations under driveways and sidewalks are destroyed, or some of the utility connections are destroyed – those types of things. You're seeing a whole site that's demolished, so you don't think: "I have to protect the municipal infrastructure." Or this fall, we had a lot of additional mud on the roads, so there's additional street-sweeping. Building 600 or 700 homes in a year is not different for Fort McMurray. But doing it in an established neighbourhood where there are other people living is different for Fort McMurray.

Your community was hit by the oil price drop in 2014. It was hit by the fire in 2016. What do you think Fort McMurray will look like two or three years from now?

I think the best part of Fort McMurray is the fact that we are resilient. And the reason we're resilient is when people move to Fort McMurray, they don't necessarily always have their families with them. So you come and you build a family and you build your own network of connections. And you rely on those people and you rely on your friends like the way people would – in any other city – rely on their family. And I think that will allow Fort McMurray to become even better. I expect over the next couple of years we will see some rebound to oil prices, and that we will see a lot of rebuilding going on. And I think Fort McMurray will be better and stronger.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

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