Families flee from wildfires
STRESSED AND SCARED: ‘Until you go through it you don’t understand it’
KAMLOOPS — Sunday night was a long and uncomfortable one for Benita Gies.
She and her husband slept — or tried to sleep — in the back of their truck on the side of the road near Lac des Roches after the 5,000-hectare Gustafsen wildfire threatened 100 Mile House and the town was evacuated around 8:45 p.m.
“It was so dark and smoky and half the roads don’t have painted lines on them,” Gies said Monday as she sat outside the Emergency Social Services reception centre in Kamloops. “We woke up in the morning and (my husband) could hardly breathe.”
It’s the second time Gies has been evacuated. She left her home at 103 Mile on Friday evening, when the fire was a couple of kilometres away and they were evacuated. She could see smoke and flames.
“I’m almost 100-per-cent mine is gone,” she said of her home, as tears ran down her face. “I’ve never seen flames like that.”
Cheryl Klaver, who lives on the west side of Lac La Hache, also left her home Friday with her dog and ended up in 100 Mile House. She made the trip to Kamloops on Sunday night.
“I don’t know if the house is there or not,” she said. “It’s horrible. We haven’t slept, you’re stressed all the time, you run on two to three hours of sleep.”
Klaver said the experience has been overwhelming, and it gives her an appreciation of what the residents of Fort McMurray went through.
“You can have sympathy and empathy for people, but until you go through it you don’t understand it and everybody’s stressed, everybody’s scared,” Klaver said.
Klaver and Gies met outside the reception centre, which is housed on the Thompson Rivers University campus, and bonded over their stories and tears. The reception centre is where evacuees have been asked to go to register, receive information and be provided with food, clothing and lodging. The women expect to be housed on the university campus until they can return home.
Ron and Sue Rogers went to 100 Mile on Friday to stay with their grandson Zack when their home in 108 Mile was evacuated. They were well prepared and fled 100 Mile when the evacuation order was issued Sunday.
“The wind is really crazy, it keeps whirling around,” Sue said. “It kept changing the fire when we were in 100 Mile. It was clear and then it was all smoked over.”
They drove toward Prince George, as instructed, but had to deviate at Little Fort, where the road was closed. They made it to Kamloops around 2 a.m. and found a motel room.
The trio arrived at the busy reception centre shortly before 10 a.m., when it opened for registration, and were in for a long day of waiting — their number was 256.
They planned to stay with family until they’re allowed to return home. They haven’t been told when that could be.
“The last we heard our house was still standing,” Ron said. “You’re apprehensive a bit, but there’s not a lot you can do about it so you just kind of gotta take it as it goes. Sure, you hate to lose your stuff and you hate to lose your home, but all these things can be replaced — lives can’t.”
As of Monday afternoon, 14,000 people had been displaced in B.C. due to the wildfires, including 2,000 from 100 Mile House.
Mitch Campsall, mayor of 100 Mile House, said he plans to stay in town, keeping an emergency office open.
“We’ve got all three levels of government, local, regional and provincial are working diligently to see that we have what we need,” he said in a phone interview.
Campsall said he’s overwhelmed by the response from businesses and the public.
“Nestlé, out of Hope, delivered 47,560 bottles of water for residents. The floodgates have opened. We are pretty lucky that we have what we have.”