'Catastrophic event': Evacuation order back in place as crews battle 58,000-hectare B.C. wildfire

VANCOUVER -

An evacuation order for hundreds of properties linked to the White Rock Lake fire in B.C.'s Interior is once again in effect.

The wildfire has grown to 58,000 hectares and has put thousands of homes on evacuation order and alert across the area. Residents of 608 properties were told they'd have to leave immediately when the order came into effect at 2 p.m. Thursday.

“This is a catastrophic event,” said Mark Healey, incident commander for the BC Wildfire Service, during a news conference at the service’s fire camp just outside of Vernon.

“This isn’t just a wildfire, this is something that is, I think, new for everybody.”

About 100 kilometres to the west, the entire community of Logan Lake was also ordered to evacuate Thursday evening due to the Tremont Creek wildfire.

The White Rock Lake fire first sparked on July 13, during a time when there were hundreds of other fires burning across the province. On Aug. 5, the fire roared into the communities of Monte Lake and Paxton Valley, leaving destruction in its path.

Homes and businesses have been destroyed, and many residents stayed behind to fight the fire despite the evacuation order. Those residents have been critical of the wildfire service, saying crews have not been there, leaving their property and livestock at risk.

During Thursday’s news conference, Healey told reporters about the impact those comments have had on him and his crews.

“When I hear that not enough is being done, that hits me in the heart,” he said. “It not only hits me, it hits every firefighter out on the ground.”

The province said resources responded within 30 minutes of the fire being reported on July 13 and have been there ever since.

“On arriving at that fire, a team reported extremely aggressive wildfire behaviour,” said Rick Manwaring, deputy minister of forests, lands, natural resource operations and rural development.

“Joining them was a helicopter with a 1,000-litre capacity to try and help them in that very early stage of that fire.”

Manwaring explained during the news conference that he was personally assigned to that fire.

“I’ve heard the criticisms and concerns of there being no resources,” said Manwaring. “I can say with personal certainty, I flew the fire, I’ve seen the resources fighting that fire as it began to grow and expanded in all directions.”

Healey added that there are additional challenges when people stay behind during an evacuation order, rather than leaving as requested.

“Their greatest danger is that their escape routes – if something were to happen – could be cut off,” he said.

There are other dangers as well that could be fatal or cause harm.

• Read more on the possible penalties people caught defying an evacuation order can face. 

Jamie Jeffreys, a director with the BC Wildfire Service, said people staying behind can also impact aerial operations.

“In general, when people stay behind, a lot of the times we may not know exactly where people are,” Jeffreys said. “So before we conduct any aerial operations, we want to make sure the area is safe, and that’s part of the reason, too, for asking people to leave and not be there.”

There are more resources on the way from across the country. A team of 40 from Alberta is set to arrive Thursday and 151 firefighters from Quebec are coming on Sunday.

“Our provincial wildfire centre in Kamloops, one of their jobs is to work with all the incident commanders around the province, all the fire centres, and it’s almost a daily if not hourly exercise of reprioritizing and reallocating resources based on parts of the province that received precipitation and (where) we can transfer resources,” said Manwaring.

The wildfire situation across North America is making getting additional resources challenging.

“A lot of the provinces across the country, as well as the Pacific Northwest in the United States, are experiencing high fire activity,” said Jeffreys. “So it has made it challenging for us to share resources as much and as freely as we normally do.”

Healey explained there are currently 200 firefighters working the White Rock Lake fire, constructing heavy equipment lines and using planned ignitions to control the fire.

“The crews on this fire are spread throughout the incident,” Healey said. “They are strategically placed in the higher priority areas where they need to put the most effective firefighting skills to use, so that we can make it safe for not only the firefighters on the ground but those communities that we’re protecting as well.”

Part of the reason people may not see crews working, he explained, is that they are always on the move.

“We constantly move the resources around to the priority areas, and once they establish lines, control lines, in places we re-allocate those resources throughout the fire,” said Healey.

The group took journalists on a tour of the fire camp. It’s one of eight scattered around the province for the challenging season.

“The fire behaviour that we’re seeing out there is – it’s beyond extreme, in my opinion,” said Healey. “In my 28 years, I have never seen forest fuels this dry.”

And there’s no sign of relief. The province is heading into yet another heat wave over the next few days, with no rain in the forecast.

“The fire will grow for sure,” said Healey.

According to the BC Wildfire Dashboard, there are more than 260 wildfires burning in the province, and 13 were discovered in the last two days.