Residents returning to devastation from wildfire in B.C.'s Shuswap

Crumpled, twisted metal alongside piles of ash and a staircase leading nowhere.

This is what’s left of the Shuswap’s Scotch Creek fire hall after a wildfire burned through the area.

“It was terrifying,” said Capt. Brian Dagleish, who has worked out of that fire hall for about 15 years.

Dagleish, along with other firefighters, were trying to protect a nearby bridge when the Bush Creek East wildfire forced them out of the area.

“We seen the wall of fire coming toward us and we had no choice but to back off,” he said.

Not only would the fire hall burn, but also the community centre next door, along with nearby businesses, homes and vehicles.

“It’s a whole different scenario when it’s your own community,” he said.

Officials say 176 structures in the Columbia-Shuswap Regional District have been destroyed, with 50 more partially destroyed, but the number is expected to climb as inaccessible areas become safe to re-enter.

Outside the CSRD, the wildfire destroyed another 85 structures and damaged 13 in the Skwlax te Secwepemculecw First Nation. In the nearby Thompson-Nicola Regional District, nine structures were lost and two more were damaged.

Thousands of evacuees are now being allowed to return to the area, where they are seeing the devastation for the first time.

Tim Conrad of the CSRD says it’s a bittersweet day.

“You go from the sadness of the loss to those folks celebrating that they have something there, so it’s both a good day and a very difficult day,” he explained.

Most of the area remains under an evacuation alert. The wildfire is still out-of-control and has blackened more than 43,000 hectares.

Conrad says that even as residents return, there are still dangers from the fire.

“There’s significant dangers here right now,” he said, including burned trees that could fall without warning.

“We have these very deep ash pits that can actually be the full height of a human being,” he said. “So that’s wood and organic material that has burned underground and left a void that you will step on and vanish into and there could still be fire in there if you happen to fall down.”

People are also being told to stay out of burned structures.