'We just feel forgotten': Cleanup to start more than 8 months after Lytton, B.C., wildfire

Heavy equipment started removing debris on municipal properties in fire-ravaged Lytton, B.C., on Tuesday.

It comes eight months after a devastating wildfire that left the village almost stuck in time until now.

“Our residents waited a long time, a really long time. And I’m hoping today gives them hope,” said Mayor Jan Polderman.

Guy Neufeld was at his burned property this week, where there are mostly only heaps of ashes and twisted metal along with the remnants of a burned-out vehicle.

But Neufeld remembers what it was.

“This place was so beautiful,” he told CTV News.

Neufeld was there trying to salvage cement patio blocks from alongside the place where his home once stood before a fire roared through Lytton last June, destroying most of the village.

“It isn’t easy. My wife and I, we go through periods of – we cry. It’s very sad,” he said.

He can’t forget the day he witnessed the fire burn his community.

“It was just a rolling black, ugly, chunks of fireball with the wind just shooting straight down with fire sparks everywhere,” he recalled.

But it’s been more than eight months since the wildfire.

And his life, like those of his former neighbours, is still in limbo.

No one has been permitted to clean-up or start to rebuild. And residents feel they’ve been left in the dark.

“There’s no communication. No assurances from both levels of government and we just feel forgotten,” he said.

However, Tuesday brought a push toward a new beginning for Lytton as heavy equipment moved in to begin surface debris removal from municipal properties.

Sixty-seven per cent of the properties were uninsured or underinsured. It wasn’t until a financial commitment of $18 million from the province was secured that remediation work could begin.

“The residents who have no insurance, their properties will be remediated and their heritage permitting costs will be picked up by the province,” said Polderman.

Recovery project manager James Heigh said private properties can also begin work now.

“At this point, we’re confident we’re going to meet the timeline set out by the mayor to have the community remediated by September,” he said.