'We're all different now': Wheatley residents suffer from lingering trauma two years after explosion

It was two years ago the town of Wheatley changed forever after an explosion rocked the downtown core, injuring 20 people.

And while progress is being made at the site of the explosion, there are still many unanswered questions — and lingering trauma.

Doug Lamb, who lived a block away from the blast, can’t shake the events that changed his life forever.

“I can't sleep, and I keep on thinking what's going to happen,” Lamb said. “And I worked all my life to get where I'm at now I lost everything. Everything is gone.”

Unable to get back to his Wheatley home, Lamb and his wife have moved five times.

His nerves are shot as he suffers daily with the unknown.

“A backfire of a car really, really bothers me, or something falls on the floor, something like that I really get problems,” he said. “And then I can think back to what happened and it doesn’t seem to go away for me anyhow.”

Lamb isn’t alone.

“I believe that I suffer from self-diagnosed PTSD, I hear sirens where there aren't any. I stop and catch my breath when I hear sirens,” explained Susan Fulmer, also a Wheatley resident. “I still have difficulty driving on Erie Street North from the traffic light.”

Fulmer started the Village Resource Centre to help others in town after the explosion.

She said many still suffer in silence from the trauma of the blast and the uncertainty that followed.

“The community has not yet begun the grieving process,” she said. “And that’s because we're still in limbo. We don't have any answers we don't know.”

The aftermath of an explosion in Wheatley, Ont. on Thursday, Aug. 26, 2021. (Source: Municipality of Chatham-Kent)A section of downtown Wheatley, dubbed the evacuation zone, is still fenced off.

Crews are monitoring for subsurface gasses — hydrogen sulfide and methane — from old, uncapped petroleum wells which caused the explosion.

“The site is stable right now. It has been stable for a while,” said Chatham-Kent CAO Michael Duben during a media briefing earlier in the week. “And I would say it's actually a very safe setting in the sense that we're constantly monitoring it.”

Duben said the town is in the late stages of purchasing 13 properties in the evacuation zone. They have been appraised and conversations will begin in the coming weeks about acquiring the properties so the municipality can look beneath to find the source of the gas.

“Until we can complete that investigation and find out where the source of the gas is coming from,” Duben said. “I don't think anyone can honestly tell you we're back to normal.”

Work at the scene of a gas explosion in Wheatley, Ont. is seen Thursday, Dec. 23, 2021. (Source: Municipality of Chatham-Kent)Chatham-Kent received $11 million from the province this week to deal with escalating emergency response costs. The community has received $27 million since that fateful day.

But Fulmer believes it’s time the government took care of the people.

“We’re never [going to] go back to the way it was. Because we're all different now,” said Fulmer. “We're [going to] go to a new normal, but we need help to get there.”

Aside from making land owners whole financially, she wants to see counselling and therapy services provided so residents can start the healing process.

“But if we don't provide it, shame on us, shame on us for not making it available to people and then complain why is there so much trauma [in] Wheatley?” she asked. “Because you didn't make it available.”