Trial by fire continues for Lytton and its residents
Mayor believes town on track to rebuild, but it will take longer than many think
Denise O'connor stands on the sidewalk outside her home of 32 years — only the home is gone and so is most of her village and she doesn't live there anymore.
“I had a wooden picket fence here,” she says, gesturing at nothing. O'connor's house burned down when a wildfire roared through the village of Lytton in the B.C. Interior on June 30, destroying everything in its path and killing two people. The fire represented a dramatic climax to the heat dome weather event that a BC Coroners Service report says killed 619 people.
For three consecutive days, Lytton set a new national temperature record, topping out at 49.6 C. The wildfire erupted the next day and Lytton's fate became known worldwide, held up as a canary in the coal mine of climate change.
Nearly one year later, most of the town remains a debris field, frozen in time. In the fire's wake, pledges poured in to build back better, with the village mayor predicting the process could begin in September. Instead, evacuees remain in limbo, saying they've received few answers as to why.
O'connor, a retired school principal, surveys her property. Mangled, rusted appliances are surrounded by decaying plaster and shards of glass. The perimeter of the home is outlined by its foundation and at the centre is a messy pile of red bricks. To the right, a cherry tree that O'connor planted more than a decade ago stands as a charred skeletal monument overlooking the Fraser River.
The first time O'connor visited the site it felt unreal. Now that she accepts it, she feels an urge to just move forward, and frustration at the lack of progress.
“I have this vision of the town as it was, right? And I know it's not going to be that,” O'connor says.
“I think it's going to be a town I don't recognize. But maybe if I'm here and it grows, and we see it evolve, it will be home.”
O'connor isn't alone in wondering about the future of the village.
When an individual experiences trauma, it can affect the sense of self. When disaster engulfs an entire community, something happens on another plane that experts say is more than the sum of its parts.
Gilad Hirschberger is a professor of political and social psychology at Reichman University in Israel.
He said that while individuals experience trauma when they have a brush with death, something else happens when catastrophe strikes an entire community.
Hirschberger's research focuses on larger-scale traumas like the Holocaust. But he said some of the same lessons can be applied to a localized cataclysm like Lytton's fire.
Collective trauma tears the fabric of society, creating a crisis of meaning, he said. It also creates an opportunity for groups to redefine who they are and where they're going.
“There's potential for rebuilding and recreating meaning and identity and relationships,” he said.
The sudden disappearance of the village centre will have obvious concrete effects, he said.
The collapse of this “scaffolding” shouldn't be diminished because it's the frame that supports the routines that make up a life.
But what makes collective trauma particularly difficult, he says, are the more abstract losses.
“All of a sudden there's a question mark on this entire community. Are they going back? Are they going to continue to have the same relationships they had in the past? Will they disperse and find a new place to live? You know, community isn't just living next to other people, it's creating social bonds. It's creating a network, this entire web of relationships.”
When Tricia Thorpe reflects on what was lost, she thinks of the community spaces and services that supported day-to-day life.
Lytton used to have two grocery stores, now it has none. It had a farmers' market, a pharmacy, a bank and a medical centre, all gone too. But for Thorpe, whose home burned down a few kilometres outside the village, it's a mistake to think Lytton has disappeared. While the fire razed the village proper, which had a population about 200, there are another 2,500 or so people still living in the surrounding area.
“People think Lytton is gone, but they forget that,” Thorpe said.
The gaps are being filled, but there are still holes. Council meetings now happen on video. There's a doctor but no lab or X-ray equipment.
Jan Polderman has been dealt what many would consider a losing hand. As mayor of Lytton, he's trying to lead the community through a crisis that dwarfs anything the rural council has dealt with before.
Polderman said he believes Lytton is on track to rebuild, it's just going to take longer than many expect. The number of small steps required on the path to recovery is overwhelming, from getting safe drinking water back in pipes, to rewriting each bylaw after governance records burned.
Work was delayed by atmospheric rivers and heavy rains in November, then extreme cold, then supply chain issues. Every step requires another, like the interim housing that must be in place before construction workers can arrive.
Lytton's tiny tax base meant the village only had $1.2 million in a reserve fund. The first bill for restoration work came in October at $1.3 million, he said. The millions in funding from federal and provincial partners are appreciated, and crucial, but even paying tax on some of the funds required a trip to the bank for a loan.
For a local Indigenous leader, the recovery process has been an opportunity to exercise his own nation's authority and show that it can get things done.
Chief Matt Pasco, who chairs the Nlaka'pamux Nation Tribal Council, was a vocal critic of the emergency response last year when he received a call from provincial officials warning the fire was threatening his cattle before they called about his people.
Since the fire, the council — which includes Lytton First Nation — has worked to secure interim housing on reserves. It has also helped the village of Lytton speed its recovery process by streamlining the archeological assessment process, one of many steps required before reconstruction.
For Pasco, the recovery is an opportunity to redefine relationships in the region, he said.
“It's almost impossible to create change unless there's some stimulus,” he said.