The third and easternmost property in the valley was occupied by Jade and Ryan, who had two small children. They were caretaking for the absentee owners but had left for holidays a few days before. That house, at the moment, was empty.
VA0778 suddenly made its presence felt. We turned to the west as one. A dark column of smoke rose dramatically in front of the declining sun, building rapidly and arching with the soft west wind. It was immediately captivating and alarming, yet foreign to Monika and me. It was our first encounter with one of the characteristics of wildfires—the “afternoon run.” The afternoon’s spiking heat, coupled with increasing winds, can drive a slumbering fire into a frenzy of fuel combustion within minutes.
“We’d better have a look at that, but we will also check in on Caleb,” Kerry said as they scrambled to the helicopter.
“The smoke can be horrific,” Sally warned. “If it gets very bad you should stay as close to the ground as possible and go into the water if necessary.” She nodded to the pond that had been built into our meadow.
The helicopter made its rattling takeoff, leaving Monika and me standing and staring at the dark, billowing plume of smoke. Any hope of quickly stopping the fire was gone. My chance of ignoring it also vanished.
We began taking some rudimentary precautions against a possible onslaught. We had the volunteers help fill sixteen-litre buckets with water and place them around the house, barn and hay shed. I connected garden hoses to the house and a standpipe by the barn, and checked that they could reach all sides of the buildings.
In the evening I went on the internet to try to find out what was happening. The wildfires dominated the headlines in British Columbia. A low-pressure weather system continued to cause dry lightning strikes, starting new fires. Strong winds fanned the existing ones. Two hundred and twenty wildfires were burning in the province, ninety-seven sparked on July 7 alone. Nearly ten thousand people were ordered to evacuate their homes in or around the towns of 100 Mile House, Ashcroft, Cache Creek, Princeton and Williams Lake. It was especially devastating to find that Lee’s Corner had been completely destroyed. It had been a popular stop for us on our trips to Williams Lake. We would rest and collect ourselves before continuing to town and a day of hectic shopping. However, I never had the carrot cake.
I phoned friends near 100 Mile House to ask about their status, for there were fires very near them. As I chatted with Jerry, I could hear Nicola shout from the door, “Jerry we got to go. The truck is loaded.” The second time she called out, Jerry sighed that he had to go. They were evacuating to a friend’s place at Green Lake.
Our fire—the Precipice Fire—was of little consequence in the general scheme of things. It was designated a Wildfire of Note but was described as being in a remote part of the province and not threatening urban structures—i.e., not an “interface fire.” It was also a considerable distance away from any of the other fires. By a random stroke of a pen years ago on someone’s desk, all the other Chilcotin fires were under the auspices of the Cariboo Regional District (CRD). We, however, came within the boundary of the Central Coast Regional District (CCRD). Next morning, the CCRD phoned asking who was in the Precipice, what properties were involved and what travel out of the valley entailed.
Our early structural protection efforts soon ran into problems. During the night our three cows drank out of some of the buckets and knocked others over. Monika and I, with the help of the French volunteers, refilled them. We rerouted the electric fence to separate the cows from the house but had to leave them access to the barn. We moved the buckets near there into a corral to keep them from the cows but I did not like the idea that I would have to step over and around an electric fence if I had to fight a fire. Katie and Tabi had gone to the Taylor Ranch to help Caleb move tractors and equipment into an open space away from the buildings and other combustible material.
That afternoon two new Forestry personnel clad in heavy red shirts arrived by helicopter. Mark Petrovcic introduced himself as the incident commander responsible for the Precipice Fire. Mark exuded confidence, telling us our fire was the only significant one of the Coastal Division, and they were putting together a team (called Incident Command, or IC) to fight it. He warned us that resources were in short supply since they were competing with all the other fires in the province. Across Mark’s chest was a shoulder harness hung with numerous pouches holding pens, a radiophone, notepads and maps. He was friendly but officious as he handed us an evacuation order from the CCRD, and firmly stated that we should leave. The BC Wildfire Service, he added, could handle the fire and would protect our buildings. If we left, we would not be allowed to return until the evacuation order was lifted. The BC Wildfire Service might indeed protect our buildings, but who would look after the garden and livestock? We had little understanding of any of the issues regarding fighting a forest fire but were of the belief that they could not force us to leave. We countered that we were not likely to go.
We took an immediate liking to Arlen, fair and tall with a bashful but easy smile. He also had an easy confidence about the fire—casual but reassuring. “It will burn!” he said casting an eye across the slopes that surrounded our meadows, “but your buildings are probably safe surrounded by all this green grass. If I were you I would probably stay too.”
From the outset the fire had a capricious nature. Winds that blow from the Pacific often change direction as they sort out which valley through the Coast Mountains offers the least resistance. The fire, which had headed directly up the Hotnarko Canyon yesterday, had now begun a run up the Atnarko Trench toward Stillwater Lake. But it still crept in our direction on the slopes above the Hotnarko River. It was difficult from our perspective to determine where the fire actually was. Smoke was billowing up across the entire western horizon without a dominant discernible column. The BC Wildfire Service website stated that the fire had grown from 15 hectares yesterday to 134 hectares. But this information was actually one day out of date.
Mark and Arlen later shared maps showing that there were five lightning strikes near the confluence of the Hotnarko and Atnarko rivers on July 7—three west of the Atnarko River and two on the east side (on the slopes of the Hotnarko Canyon). It was the two above the Hotnarko River that started the Precipice Fire and combined to contribute to its rapid expansion.
In addition to phoning the Wildfire Service and helicopter companies, Lee Taylor had called our scattered neighbours. Everyone jumped into action. By Saturday, David J and David D (nicknamed Hoss, because of his resemblance to the character on Bonanza) came with a pressure pump, hoses and sprinklers from Anahim Lake. On Sunday, Troy and Lorrein, long-time friends associated with the Precipice by way of the Mecham Cabin a little way up the south side of the valley, and a man called Hans, arrived from Bella Coola with more hoses and sprinklers. (Most of them came without permits, therefore defying the evacuation order.) It was chaotic as we scrambled to set up minimal structural protection around the properties.
In the early afternoon the fire began travelling fast—an afternoon run in two directions. Mark flew in for a second time. He was with Kerry, not Arlen, this time, and once again he urged us to leave, reporting that the fire was moving our way at half a kilometre an hour and was now within five kilometres of us. He was angry that not all our volunteers were near the house. He quickly returned to the helicopter and flew to the Taylor Ranch. They landed in the midst of the buildings and found Katie and Tabi with Caleb. Caleb had not made himself available on Kerry’s first visit, and now she was very agitated. She warned the three of them that they were under evacuation order and urged Katie and Tabi to return to our place and find a way to leave the valley.
Our heads were down, focusing on the task of making our property fire safe. Each day we learned more in a numbing struggle to prepare for the arrival of the fire. Fortunately we had cut the hay in the meadows near our buildings earlier. They had been flooded for regrowth and were very wet and green. We set David J’s pump at a central location between the house and the greenhouse, drawing water from an
