Local emergency responders say they’re proud to have been part of efforts to help during the province’s wildfire emergency, and they’re coming back to the Sunshine Coast with valuable experience.
Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD) emergency planning coordinator Bill Elsner, firefighters and trucks from the Halfmoon Bay, Sechelt and Gibsons departments as well as Sunshine Coast RCMP officers joined hundreds of others from across B.C. in aiding Interior communities during the province-wide state of emergency that was declared July 7.
Elsner told Coast Reporter he put in seven straight 18-hour days at the Cariboo Regional District’s Emergency Operations Centre last month, providing much needed relief for the local staff.
“Many of the people working in the Emergency Operations Centre, their homes were also under evacuation alert or order. They were personally impacted as well as trying to manage this emergency for everyone else,” Elsner said.
He said the SCRD has always been very supportive when it comes to allowing him to aid other regions dealing with emergencies, and he makes the most of the opportunity to teach and learn.
“One of the roles I had in Williams Lake was planning for the evacuation of the city,” he said. “That was a very valuable learning experience.”
Elsner estimates about 20 evacuees from the Interior actually ended up on the Sunshine Coast, where they had help from local Emergency Social Services volunteers, and he said the wildfires have reinforced the value of that program.
“These people are all volunteers,” he said.
“There were people evacuated that had to drive eight or 10 hours in some cases and be in reception centres and be looked after in group lodging – gymnasiums and hockey arenas and curling rinks. That’s never happened before in B.C. on the scale it has this summer.”
Firefighters from Sechelt and Halfmoon Bay have been going up in groups of two to crew tankers and were based mainly in Williams Lake.
Patrick Hobbs is a long-serving volunteer with the Halfmoon Bay Fire Department who recently returned from the Williams Lake area. He was also one of the Halfmoon Bay firefighters who went to Kelowna during the 2003 fire season.
“One of the most eerie things was being in the town of Williams Lake with nobody there,” Hobbs said. “It was almost like a science fiction movie. At every major intersection there was a huge police and army presence.”
Halfmoon Bay and Sechelt crews used their trucks to ferry water to BC Wildfire Service teams and were assigned to keep fire from spreading to key buildings and to support specialized structure protection units.
Deputy chief Dwight Davison of the Sechelt fire department did two tours in the wildfire zone, and he said protecting the area’s lumber mills was vital.
“When the fire was first coming into Williams Lake they wanted to ensure the three mills, which are the three main employers of that town and that region, were protected.”
The crew from Gibsons, which also included a volunteer from the Roberts Creek fire department, was given similar tasks in the 108 Mile House, 105 Mile House, Cache Creek and Loon Lake areas.
Capt. George Williams was the crew leader and he said one of the most difficult jobs was patrolling communities that had lost homes, or where sudden flare-ups of underground hotspots would put homes at risk.
“We went out to Loon Lake and there was a lot of devastation up there,” he said. “It was quite hard on some of my crew to see that amount of devastation.”
One part of the experience that stands out for all four men was the level of cooperation, coordination and camaraderie that enabled the mix of full-time, big city firefighters and volunteers from dozens of small towns to function together with very few glitches.
“It was like one big fire department, and that’s something you don’t always see,” Williams said. “It shows that when something has to come together, people can really come together.”
Hobbs described it as a show of force from communities across the province. “It was so amazing to see how everybody just jumped at the call,” he said.
Davison said the firefighters also returned with some valuable insights they can use to improve fire protection here on the Coast, after seeing different procedures and equipment in action in the Interior.
“The Sechelt department is going to look at some different options to explore with regards to possible equipment and training that we can use to bolster our department, and I’m sure the other fire departments that spent some time up there are going to do the same thing,” he said.
Another lesson Davison and Elsner both emphasized is the importance of people living in an area with a high potential for interface wildfires to be ready, and do what they can to make their properties “fire smart.”
“I think the fire smart message – looking around your home, cleaning your eavestroughs, cleaning debris off roofs, removing combustibles that are stacked next to your house – is something that we need to take way more seriously on the Sunshine Coast,” he said. “Our fire danger is extreme right now and that’s not an anomaly any more.”
Elsner said he’s had a few calls from people wanting advice on personal preparedness since he returned to the Coast and he’s encouraging residents to consider hosting a preparedness workshop and check out the advice available through the SCRD’s emergency program
(www.scrd.ca/Emergency-Program).
As well as the valuable professional experience, Hobbs said he and his Halfmoon Bay crewmate Glenn Porter also got to see the ultimate payoff from a massive effort to keep a community safe. “We were thrilled to see the people of Williams Lake being able to come back into town, and the overwhelming gratitude.”
Williams said the crew from Gibsons also appreciated the community support they saw in the Interior. “When we were going up there, there were tons of people thanking us… When you made it back to town it was a really positive thing, which a lot of the fire departments needed because it was a tough go up there, especially being in the smoke for 24 hours a day, and everyone misses home.”
