Chapter 18 I had to go over the mountain
“What are they going to do about gas?” Jinwoo Kim was thinking. When the evacuation order was issued for Clinton on July 29, a couple of RCMP officers knocked on his door and told him it was time to leave. Jin, a big man with an infectious laugh, is the proprietor of Clinton Shell Gas and Budget Foods, right in the middle of Clinton. There are only two gas stations in town: the Petro-Canada and his. Jin knew that the owner of the other station had already shut down and left. He figured that many of the evacuees would want to fill up on their way out. Although he sent his wife and kids down to the coast for safety, he didn’t think it made sense for him to go—not just yet anyway.
Jin lowered the price of gas to his cost and stayed open. “There are lots of people who need some financial help. At least that would give them enough to get out of town,” Jin said to me. We were speaking in his office, up a precipitously steep set of stairs above his store. When Clinton was threatened, Jin posted on his Facebook page that he would wait until everybody else got out before leaving himself. Then an RCMP officer visited. He had realized that the firefight desperately needed Jin—the officers, the firefighters, everyone who was staying behind. He pleaded, “Can you please stay back? Can you stay to help?”
Thirty fire trucks had arrived in Clinton, some with empty tanks. More firefighters, police officers and more vehicles were on the way. Yes, there was a gas station in Cache Creek, but if the trucks went there to fill up, it would be an hour taken away from firefighting. Jin agreed to assist. The first week of the evacuation order, he was open every day for twenty hours. “’Cause they were setting up and all that and they always needed fuel. It was crazy. There was no planning.
“I’d be sleeping at home and they would come and knock. Everybody here knows where I live. They’d come at 3:00 in the morning. I’d come down to get them fuel. One morning they wanted me to fill up at 5:00 in the morning. I slept in that day and then two fire trucks came to my house. Twice they woke me up. Pretty intense.” Jim reminded the drivers they owed him one. He said, “If you guys are leaving town, please take me with you. I’ve got no vehicle. My wife took the vehicles and all that. Don’t you guys leave me behind.”
During that first week, Jin was alone in the store; his employees had left. So he called his brother, Sang, and asked him to come to Clinton and help out. “I got him into town,” Jin said. When I asked Jin how he got Sang past the checkpoints, he explained with a big grin: “I held the fuel. I said, ‘If you want fuel, I need help.’” After Sang’s arrival, things settled down slightly. Jin now had someone to spell him off and, since his brother had driven up, he also had access to a vehicle.
“The cops needed ice and energy drinks,” Jin remembered. “They were working so hard, standing outside in the sun. It was hot and smoky. Coca-Cola, Pepsi and the ice company wouldn’t let their drivers go into evacuation areas for the drivers’ own safety. So I’d go meet them at Lone Butte or Cache Creek.” Jin would grab the drinks and the ice and race back to Clinton, trying to get there before all the ice melted. Then he’d deliver the refreshments to the officers in their cars.
Clinton did not empty out after the evacuation was ordered. About four hundred firefighters came in. Three hundred of them were with the BC Wildfire Service; the rest were members of thirty different fire departments, large and small, located all over BC. Jim Rivett, who was mayor at the time, said that about a quarter of the town’s 650 residents stayed behind also, some to support the firefighters and first responders by keeping restaurants and hotels up and running, and some, like Ryan Lake, to defend and protect their own places. All of these people needed food. If they left to pick up supplies, they would not be allowed back in. Those residents who wanted to stay turned to local outlets like Budget Foods to fill their needs. And although the Wildfire Service had fuel for its helicopters, the police and many of the ground crews relied on Jin for gasoline and diesel.
Jin had been having trouble getting in supplies even before the evacuation order was issued. Highways around Clinton were closed due to fires elsewhere and the delivery trucks couldn’t get through. When he ran low on milk, bread and other necessities, he appealed to Jim, the mayor, for help. Jim told me on the phone, “Well, I intervened and spoke with the TNRD and CRD and explained that they didn’t need to throw up all these roadblocks, and then it was, ‘Well it’s not us, it’s the RCMP,’ and the RCMP said, ‘Well it’s not us.’ But by going to them and just kind of raising hell, they got the message and things got a little better.”
“Once,” Jin said, “I was out of fuel, empty. All the trucks were just waiting here. Thirty fire trucks waiting here. They’re like, ‘When are you getting fuel? When are you getting fuel?’ Fire engines go through diesel like crazy.” Normally in the summer a load of diesel would last him ten days or so. Now he needed two or three deliveries of diesel every week, as well as two tanker loads of gasoline. Despite the lineup at the pumps, the TNRD wouldn’t approve delivery because it was too dangerous for the fuel to come in. Jin worked the phone. He talked to the mayor and to a good friend of his who knew the movers and shakers in the TNRD. Someone got wind of the situation and publicized the news on Facebook. Finally, Jin talked to the incident commander on the Elephant Hill fire at the time and got his approval to bring fuel in.
Sometimes red tape wasn’t the problem, Mother Nature was. When fires broke out on both sides of Highway 97 to the south, it became simply too hazardous for drivers to make the journey. Jin decided he would pick up groceries himself by an alternative route. Highway 99 was also closed, but there was another option—a dirt road, very scenic and very hair-raising. “I had to go over the mountain on Pavilion,” Jin explained. The road is a narrow track with an 18 percent grade going up from Clinton to the summit and a 12 percent grade going down the other side. In places it’s single-lane only, so if two vehicles meet, one of them has to back up to a wider spot. The road travels along tight switchbacks over steep cliffs, without any guardrails between the driver and the yawning chasm below. “But we needed to survive,” Jin said. “I had to do the deal or the food truck wouldn’t come at all.” He did the trip three times with several friends in pickups. They met a grocery truck at the gas station at Fountain Flat Trading Post, about fifteen kilometres northeast of Lillooet. Jin told me, “The town people have been helping me to succeed in this business for twenty years, so I’m like, ‘Okay, this is my time to pay back.’”
According to Jin, one of the consequences of the town being on order was that the residents “had absolutely no way to get to my store.” This would be violating the terms of the order. Not only did he have to bring in food for them, but he also had to deliver it. Jin had a pass that allowed him to go back and forth; he would arrange to meet his customers at a checkpoint that had been set up in town. Then he’d explain to the police that he was from the Shell gas station, bringing in supplies. “They were pretty easy as long as people didn’t wander around in town.”
On the other hand, the firefighters were able to come into his store. This gave Jin a chance to get to know them, and he developed a deep respect for what they were doing. “Those ground crews, they work long hours. They’ll get going at 7:00 in the morning, finish at 7:00. Then if it’s crazy, they’ll get called again at 10:00 and work all night. Come back and sleep for six hours and go out again. That’s why I opened up my store for them. Yeah, I’m like, ‘You guys are working your butts off to save my town. I can supply all the amenities, the snacks.’ Sometimes I’d just give it to them. I said, ‘Just take it.’” Jin told me that he also gave crews vitamin C. “It was cold some mornings and they’re sleeping in a tent. They’re very tired. I said, ‘Just take it.’” I laughed when I heard this. “You were like their mom,” I told him. He laughed too.
Jin managed the store with only his brother to help for about two weeks. When I remarked that it must have been exhausting running things during the fires, he said, “It was exhausting and stressful. But I had all the people behind me. People would say on a Facebook page, ‘Thank you very much.’ A kind word like that kept me going. While it’s something that I wouldn’t want to see again, when the hard time came, everybody got together and worked together. I met so many people and we became good friends. I still talk to them over Facebook. It was a good experience.”