I’m putting fingers to keyboard on Sunday as I start this piece, and it’s raining. And if the weatherman on my phone is right, there isn’t going to be much change for a few days at least. So you maybe don’t want to think about fire protection.
But we should. We should be thinking about it regardless of the daily forecast and regardless of the season. Forest fires usually only come in the summer, but if we think about it in January, we might not be in trouble in August.
And did we think about it last January? Probably not, and I’m as guilty as you are! But here in June, with perhaps another hot summer ahead of us, we should think about it.
Here’s how it is. We’re living in a very dangerous place, in terms of forest fire danger. In fact, if my local history knowledge serves me correctly, it was exactly one hundred years ago that a big fire destroyed the timberlands of the Columbia River Lumber Company, the second largest sawmill in British Columbia at the time, and located on the bank of the Columbia River right here in Golden.
The ruins are still there by the river in town. It was probably also one of the few forest companies in the province that had its own railway from its timber source to the sawmill. It was a big outfit; they were three years just getting rid of all the lumber that was piled up and tearing the mill down.
Fire danger, at least during most of my lifetime, was not much of a concern in the settled part of the valley. We had fires in the ’50’s and ’60’s, but they stayed out in the backcountry. During those years we never really knew for sure if there was a fire until the Forest Service went to the bars looking for firefighters.
And when that happened, the imbibing came to an end, and whoever was there that looked like they could fight fire was conscripted. There was no refusing. Almost like getting called to the army during wartime.
And at the magnificent salary of 75 cents an hour! But if we think of Fort McMurray, Lytton and Jasper, we know that this may be a different age; whether it’s climate change or something else, fire seems to be a much greater danger than in earlier decades. So we should think about it.
If you possibly need some convincing, it’s a ways up there, but take a drive to Jasper and see the vacant spaces that used to be covered with houses and businesses. Every once in a while there will be a brand new house in the middle of a burned-out area that looks completely out of place, but you fully well know that there used to be other houses or buildings beside it on both sides. You would also notice all of the bunkhouse-type mobile homes, which are providing homes for the people who haven’t yet rebuilt.
The sun still shines in Jasper, but it’s clearly a much different town than it used to be. All because of fire. Catastrophic fire.
Could anything have been done there to prevent all the damage that occurred? I don’t know. But I know this.
Nothing can be done without thinking about it beforehand. I don’t think any of us living in the Golden area today know how close we came to disastrous fire two years ago. We could very well have been only one windstorm away from catastrophe.
The fire that burned much of the west bench between Parson and Golden was brought under control only because of one thing: the wind died down. Had that not happened, only our imaginations can contemplate what could have happened. In fact, as you probably know, it was catastrophic for two families in the Washout Creek area, just twenty or so km south of Golden, whose homes were destroyed by the fire.
We live on the east bench at Nicholson, and we could see the flames at night from our kitchen window. So what do we do about it? Again, I don’t know, but we need to do something.
Is it our job to do anything, or is it the government’s job? Of course, it’s the government’s job. Everything’s the government’s job.
But if the government doesn’t get around to it, and I have a hunch the government doesn’t get around to everything, we could burn just like Jasper did. It would be nice if the province was able to look after everyone all the time, but if it doesn’t, or can’t, where does that leave us? Most of the time, of course, it leaves us just fine.
But Fort McMurray and Lytton and Jasper were not left just fine. They were left, at least in large part, burned to the ground. And I have mentioned those three a few times in this piece, but it isn’t only those three.
You can add Kelowna, the area west of Salmon Arm and others to this list. So we need to do something to protect ourselves. There’s nothing wrong with a small community such as ours in taking the lead on something where we have so much to lose.
Someone needs to lead a fire prevention force of local officials and residents who will come up with possible solutions to catastrophic fire, which could arrive in our area any summer. Not maybe this summer, or next, but some summer. There wasn’t a huge fire in our area from 1900 to 1925, but in ’26 there was one, and Golden was changed forever.
The first question for such a group would be to ask whether or not a community such as ours could make some improvement in the danger that we face. Fire. So useful to us when we need it, and so destructive to us, at times, when we don’t.
