Writer Bethany Lindsay
Bethany Lindsay is a CBC news writer from Vancouver who previously worked for the Vancouver Sun, the North Shore News and CTV. She authored a new book, “British Columbia Burning: The Worst wildfire season in B.C. history,” about the wildfires that spread across the province last summer. She spoke with valley editor James Miller this week about the project and her recollections of last summer.
HERALD: What inspired you to write the book?
LINDSAY: In my years of reporting, I’ve never experienced an event like the 2017 wildfires. It was a crisis from day 1, and it felt like every day brought a new emergency for two straight months. It’s crazy to imagine, but even in September, when it seemed like we were getting a break, more of B.C. burned than what we normally see in an entire year. This was something that affected every aspect of life in B.C. — from our environment to the safety of our families to the natural resources we depend on to support our economy.
HERALD: The photography is great. If you can pick just one photo, which one best tells the story?
LINDSAY: There’s a Canadian Press photo of Angie Thorne embracing her weeping granddaughter that has stuck with me since the moment I first saw it. It was taken on the first weekend of the fires, after Thorne’s home on the Ashcroft Indian Band reserve was destroyed, along with about 11 others. This was a community that had no warning of what was coming, and the photo captures the emotional wreckage that wildfires leave behind. It’s a major reason Thorne is a central character in my book.
HERALD: Which moment most vividly stands out from when you covered the fires last year?
LINDSAY: For me, it was a Facebook post from the Cariboo Regional District on July 7 that said: “Fires are being reported faster than they can be written down.” That was the moment when it became absolutely clear that this was wildfire season was nothing like the ones we’ve experienced in the past. Sure enough, the fires that started that afternoon are the ones that firefighters spent the rest of the summer trying to bring under control.
HERALD: For those who lost homes in fires, how have they rebounded and rebuilt their lives?
LINDSAY: It’s a slow process. Homes are being rebuilt and belongings replaced, but the emotional impacts are a bit harder to reckon with. There aren’t a lot of long-term studies on the psycho-social effects of wildfires, but the people I spoke with told me they haven’t felt so helpless since they were children. The trauma isn’t easily lifted. At the same time, this has helped put things in perspective for some people — they’re holding their families closer these days, and feeling a lot less attached to material things.
HERALD: In your opinion, do most B.C.ers take the risk of wildfire seriously?
LINDSAY: That really depends on where people live and whether they’ve experienced wildfires before. The Tl’etinqox community in the Chilcotin, for example, was incredibly well prepared because of planning that began after evacuations in 2009 and 2010. They trained community members to fight fires and had others designated to handle supplies, exit routes, etc.
People who’ve lived in wildfire-prone areas for their whole lives knew that something big would come eventually. But even so, I think there’s a lot more that people could do to prepare their properties through the FireSmart program, and I know a lot of communities will be taking this stuff more seriously in the future.
HERALD: How well prepared do you think the province was? Did our leaders and emergency personnel do a good job?
LINDSAY: Every year since 2003 we’ve heard how the province is lagging on meeting the recommendations of the independent review conducted by Gary Filmon. Filmon wrote the foreword for my book, and he shares those concerns. The Forest Practices Board estimated that by 2015, only about 10 per cent of hazardous potential wildfire fuels had been dealt with. The experts tell me we haven’t been doing enough controlled burning for a long time, so there was a lot of dried-out organic matter left on the ground — perfect for a fire.
In terms of fighting the fires, I’ve heard complaints from people who lost their property to backburns and unexpected flare ups. But at the same time, there were a lot of days this summer when there wasn’t much that could be done without putting lives on the line. At a certain fire intensity, it’s not safe to have firefighters on the ground, and aircraft are essentially useless. The only option then is fighting fire with fire, and there’s no way to predict with 100 per cent certainty how that will work out. And, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that, despite all the loss last summer, nobody was seriously injured or killed. That’s a major victory, in my mind.
HERALD: We’re told fire season will be the new norm in B.C. Have any improvements been made from last year?
LINDSAY: I think that remains to be seen. The independent review on the 2017 fires and floods has just been released, so we’ll have to watch for how seriously the province takes those recommendations.
HERALD: How did the fire season of 2017 differ from that of 2003, when the Okanagan was hit?
LINSDAY: The 2003 wildfires were hugely devastating for thousands of people, but the fires that hit the Okanagan were concentrated in a much smaller area, which allowed for a much more focused response. In 2017, we saw what happens when there are fires threatening communities across a wider area. Resources end up being stretched pretty thin, and it’s a scramble to find evacuation routes and space to accommodate all the evacuees
HERALD: Can you draw any parallels with the fire season of 2017 to what’s going on in Grand Forks and Osoyoos right now?
LINDSAY: These are both major natural disasters that caught people off guard and will cause hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage. But there may also be a climate change connection. We expect that severe wildfires are going to happen much more frequently as the climate warms, and it’s possible the same will be true of catastrophic floods. Perhaps most alarmingly, floods and fires also feed into each other. Last year’s flooding helped support a proliferation of green matter down at the ground level, which dried out as soon as the summer hit, creating the perfect fuel for wildfires. Now, the fires have wiped out vegetation in many parts of the province, which in turn makes the landscape much more vulnerable to flooding. It’s a bit of a nasty cycle.