Fishing resort owners vow to rebound from Christmas Eve fire

A Christmas Eve fire may have destroyed the main lodge of a popular fishing resort on the shore of Babine Lake but the owners are heaping accolades on their neighbours for preventing the outcome from being even worse.

Despite the setback, Traude Hoff said she and her husband, Bill, have vowed to have Babine Lake Resort ready to welcome guests by the May long weekend like they’ve done every year. Although the lodge burned to the ground, the cabins at the resort near Pendleton Bay Provincial Park and about 40 kilometres north of Burns Lake were saved.

“I might be working from a tent, but hey, I tell you we’ll be open,” Hoff said Monday in a telephone interview.

She said the fire broke out in a shed attached to the lodge. The temperature had dipped close to -20 C and the shed had to be kept heated because it housed an expensive water treatment system.

“We just started up the generator and it blew up,” Hoff said.

About a dozen people leapt to action. They couldn’t pump water out of the lake because it was too cold, but wielding fire extinguishers and even throwing what snow they could gather at the fire. One even deployed a backhoe to help keep the blaze at bay.

“We were amazed how fast everyone was here,” Hoff remarked.

They won a reprieve when the wind changed direction so the fire no longer threatened the cabins closest to the lodge.

“All we can say is we’re the luckiest people that not more happened,” Hoff said.

Since word got out, a Go Fund Me campaign has raised more than $7,000 so far and the Hoffs have been fielding phone calls of concern and support from people living in the area and from as far away as Mexico and South Africa.

The Hoffs have operated the resort since 1989.

“We have guests who have come out since our first opening,” Hoff said. “Some of the parents are gone but some of the kids are still coming, so we have now second and third generations of kids that grew up here.”