Dynamic fires cause evacuation difficulties
219 fires burning, more than 14,000 people evacuated amid deteriorating conditions
KAMLOOPS, B.C.— At first, the drive didn’t seem too bad.
Sally Aitken and her husband decided to leave their cabin in British Columbia’s West Chilcotin region due to wildfires on Sunday. They were not ordered to evacuate, but had been without power for days and the only highway out had recently reopened.
As they drove along Hwy. 20, they saw nothing overly dramatic: light smoke, burned trees. Then they suddenly found themselves in the middle of an intense blaze, with flames leaping on either side of the road and smoke so dark they could barely see.
“Your choice is, when it gets bad, do you turn around . . . and then you have to go through what you’ve already been through, or do you just keep going? We just kept going,” recalled Aitken in an interview.
Aitken, a professor in forest and conservation sciences at the University of British Columbia, shot a video of the harrowing experience and posted it on social media. She hopes the video will be instructive to people who are fleeing the hundreds of blazes across B.C.
Provincial officials said Tuesday that 219 fires were burning and more than 14,000 people have been forced from their homes. Thousands more are under evacuation alerts, meaning they must be prepared to leave at a moment’s notice.
The dynamic nature of the fires does pose challenges for officials handling highway closures, said Mike Lorimer, a regional director at the Transportation Ministry. When drivers come across heavy smoke, they should slow down, put their hazards on and keep driving, he said.
An evacuation alert was issued for the more than 10,000 residents of Williams Lake Monday night. Municipal officials warned wind and lightning forecast for Wednesday could push fires toward the city at a “rapid pace.”
The Tsilhqot’in Nation said four of its six communities near Williams Lake are threatened and many members have already evacuated.
Joe Alphonse, chief of the Tl’etinqox community, said about 300 people stayed behind to save about 120 homes. They have some heavy equipment, but the federal and provincial governments must bring in more resources, he said.
The toll from the fire near Cache Creek, west of Kamloops, was revised on Tuesday. Village Mayor John Ranta said in a conference call that more than 60 homes at a trailer park were destroyed. He had previously said 30 homes were lost.
“Many of the people in the Boston Flats trailer park had only moments to leave and many were lucky to escape with their lives,” Ranta said.
Hot and dry conditions are expected to continue across B.C.’s firestricken regions, primarily the central and southern Interior. Bob Turner of Emergency Management BC said officials were planning for the possibility of mass evacuations, including from Williams Lake. Four emergency experts are arriving from Alberta to help with planning, while Canadian Armed Forces aircraft helicopters are on standby if airlifts are needed, he said.
Wildfires have scorched about 430 square kilometres of land so far this year in B.C.
The blazes are being fought by some 1,000 B.C. firefighters, with about 300 colleagues and support staff arriving from Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, New Brunswick and Manitoba.
Three hundred additional RCMP members from outside the fire areas have been redeployed to help, and another 40 members are being brought in from Alberta, said Deputy Commissioner Brenda Butterworth-Carr at a news conference.