NORTHERN B.C. WILDFIRES MERGE
Two large fires burning in northern B.C. have merged into one, now covering some 300 square kilometres near the Telegraph Creek area.
The merged Alkali Lake and South Stikine River fires have so far destroyed 32 buildings in and around the Tahltan First Nation, with up to 45 per cent of the remaining buildings damaged by fire.
“Most of the structures were family homes, both on and outside of the reserve,” said Chad Norman Day, president of the Tahltan Central Government. “It’s going to take years to rebuild what’s been lost, and it’s going to take decades for the land to be restored to where it was before, because we’ve lost a lot of forests.”
Day’s own family ranch, which has been passed down generations, was damaged in the fire. “That’s been quite devastating for us, but at least our home is safe,” he said. “We’re doing everything we can to fundraise and take care of the financial needs of the people.”
Fire information officer Heather Rice said there are 11 helicopters, an air tanker and 130 fire personnel on the ground fighting the merged fire, with a focus on protecting the remaining structures and infrastructure.
“The main challenge is the significant winds we’re seeing that have not proven to die down,” Rice said. “We’re looking at pos- sibly 50 km winds gusting. And that would not be in our favour.”
Nation to nation support has been strong throughout this ordeal, Day said.
“We’ve received donations from the Haisla, the Kaska, the Tlingit, the Wet’suwet’en, the Tsilhqot’in, the Nisga’a… these donations continue to come in and we’ve received support from our neighbours and beyond – it’s been overwhelming.”
Two trucks full of food, toiletries and generators were donated by the Tl’etinqox Nation (Anaham) to the evacuees of Telegraph Creek on Thursday.
Last summer, the Tl’etinqox community faced a fire themselves and made headlines when many stayed behind to defend their homes.
“We’ve been through this ordeal. So now that this opportunity to help out another community has presented itself we’ll take it,” said band councillor Cecil Grinder, after driving eight hours to drop off the items in Smithers. “We never lost any buildings (ourselves), but these guys lost a lot because Telegraph Creek is more dense in the forest.”
Kevin Skrepnek, B.C.’s chief fire information officer, said what’s unusual this year was “that from one corner of the province to the other, we’re quite busy, it’s not one particular area,” he said.
“It’s very difficult to directly compare one fire season to another just based on the statistics alone, because the stats only tell part of the full story,” said Ryan Turcot, spokesman for the BC Wildfire Service.
Across the province, 476 wildfires were burning Thursday, including 39 new fires sparked the previous day, while 1,565 have been recorded so far this year, well above the average of 1,130 expected by this point in the season, Turcot said.
“In terms of area burned, we are still sit- ting at about 75 per cent of what the average would be for this time of year,” Turcot noted.
Wildfires in 2018 have chewed through 1,180 square kilometres of brush and timber, far below the 10-year average of 1,550 square kilometres.
“But that doesn’t tell the whole story because that doesn’t factor in things like the human impact of wildfires, the proximity of some of these wildfires to communities or to people and property,” Turcot said.
Evacuation orders and alerts are in place for residents of communities near wildfires in each of British Columbia’s six fire centres, a significant difference from 2017 when huge blazes force thousands from their homes in south-central B.C., but conditions in other parts of the province were less extreme.
Environment Canada maintained heat warnings for most of southern B.C. through Thursday but cautioned that winds would kick up Friday as the heat eases.
Turcot urged extreme caution everywhere in B.C., as 3,000 firefighters and support staff work to gain an upper hand on the fires.
“The fire danger rating across really all of the province does range from high to extreme right now which means if new wildfires are introduced to the area there’s a high likelihood that they could take off at a very rapid, volatile rate,” he said.