Chapter 21 Will you pick up Bear?
When 100 Mile House was evacuated on July 9, Miguel Vieira’s family, who live there, needed a place to stay. They went to be with Miguel, who lives at 70 Mile House. His wife, Krista, said to me, laughing, that, as he is Portuguese, “he has quite a bit of family.” Nine of Miguel’s relatives came, and then Krista’s parents, whose place is on the south side of Green Lake, also arrived. “Our driveway,” she recalled, “turned into an RV park.”
As this one example reminds us, many British Columbians who had to leave their homes did not register at evacuation centres but went to stay with relatives and friends. Official reports peg the number of displaced people at sixty-two thousand,64 but not all refugees were counted and the total tally is likely significantly higher.
Krista and Miguel Vieira are the owners of the 70 Mile General Store, which is where Gordon and I met them for several hours in February 2018 to talk about the summer of 2017. “It wasn’t our first fire,” Krista said. For a few days back in 2009, folks a couple of kilometres to the north were pushed out of their homes due to a wildfire. “Everybody came to the store,” Krista said. “They camped out here in their trailers and vehicles and we made breakfast by donation.” During that fire, she also looked after the children of single dads who were volunteer firefighters. “We had six kids at our house, sleeping everywhere.”
On January 2, 2010, a fire began in the ceiling of the store. By 3:00 in the afternoon, the building was engulfed in flames, but fortunately no one was hurt. The Vieiras rebuilt even though it took a year to do it. Krista had grown up in the store—she was three when her parents bought the business in 1987 and wasn’t going to give up on it lightly.
The evacuation of 100 Mile House caused many ripple effects. While most of the residents left the town, not all of them moved from the area. Many went to friends and relatives nearby, and still needed food and other supplies. Because 100 Mile was out of commission and several roads were closed, suddenly a crazy-quilt situation developed. A few stores were besieged whereas others, fully stocked, were devoid of customers. The state of affairs caught the attention of Ann Hui at The Globe and Mail, who reported on July 13, “Since receiving its last regular shipment last week, the Lone Butte store has been mostly sold out of milk, bread, eggs and fresh produce. The store was able to get some supplies on Tuesday after a truck destined for Lac la Hache, about an hour north, was turned away from reaching that town.” Meanwhile, John Sperling, the owner of the Safeway at 99 Mile House, just south of 100 Mile, was fully stocked but potential customers could not get to him. The evacuation order meant not many residents were left in town and the blockades were preventing anyone else from entering it to purchase food or other necessities.65
In anticipation of being besieged, the Vieiras put in a huge order with a variety of suppliers. On July 11, their garage was filled to the brim with groceries. “It was just insane,” Krista remembered. For a while, the store did twice as much business in a day as it normally does in a week. Miguel’s family helped by stocking and restocking the shelves, but it was hard to keep up. Normal supply chains were disrupted. Milk was difficult to get and chips, that staple road food, also were elusive because they normally came from 100 Mile. The Vieiras couldn’t get fresh hot dog buns from the bakery that usually provided them. And the buns they bought as a substitute were not only less desirable (frozen), but much more expensive. “They cost more than what we were selling them for previously. But we couldn’t up it. We just took the cut.” Krista said. People have long memories in the Cariboo. During the fire that hit 70 Mile in 2009, one local motel upped its prices to over $100 a night. “We saw how much it affected the business—still. I was like, ‘We’re not upping prices,’” Krista said.
On July 15, Clinton and South Green Lake were placed on alert; Williams Lake and an area east of Clinton were evacuated. The fire activity, especially to the south, made the Vieiras’ family nervous. Except for Miguel’s sister and brother-in-law, they all left to get farther away from the fires. Krista worried about her two girls, Makayla and Hannah, who were nine and seven at the time. When a friend in Port Moody, who also had two girls, offered to take them, Krista happily accepted, relieved to get them out of the fire zone.
But many of the properties to the south of 70 Mile had their orders downgraded to alerts on July 20, and two days later the residents of 100 Mile House were allowed back. Krista relaxed a little. Things seemed to be returning to normal. Miguel’s family and Krista’s parents went back to their own places and the girls came home from Port Moody. Tides of people were washing in and out along the roads of the Cariboo. When the fire blew up, they ebbed out and when it died down, they washed in.
For two weeks, Krista and Miguel were working so hard they had not left their property. They decided to take a short holiday and drove over to Green Lake to see Krista’s parents. On July 29, the family went to 100 Mile House to attend the funeral of Miguel’s uncle; Krista and Miguel fully expected this would be a short interruption of their holiday. They anticipated going back afterward and enjoying a few more days of summer at the lake.
Events intervened, however. While in 100 Mile, Krista said, “I got a heads-up from a few different people in a few different ways. One was our TNRD rep, Sally Watson, who was like, ‘Looking like we’re gonna get evacuated. It would be awesome if you stayed open.’ I was like, ‘Yep, not a problem.’” Krista realized that people were going to need gas and food. She figured they wouldn’t be stocking up on staples, but they’d want pop and chips. She said, “They’re all driving in the middle of the night. And what do you do when you drive? You snack.” As they expected to be unusually busy, Krista and Miguel left their kids with his parents in 100 Mile. “Don’t worry, we’ll come back and get you in a little bit,” Krista told her girls. She did not for a moment imagine that 70 Mile would be placed under evacuation order and that the separation would last for much longer than “a little bit.”
Miguel is a member of the 70 Mile Fire Department, and he was called to take a shift at the sawmill in Chasm, ten kilometres to the south. His group of volunteers and a structural protection crew had been dispatched to set up bladders, pumps and sprinklers. That left Krista alone to manage the store. Luckily she was able to get a few people in to help. Krista recalled the night of July 29 vividly: “This was when shit hit the fan. That was the Big Crazy. This was when Green Lake and Pressy Lake were evacuated. All those places—everywhere, everywhere, everywhere—from Clinton north. And they were all told: ‘Highway 24.’” From 4:30 p.m. on, the TNRD issued four orders and one alert. It was like a rolling blackout. The last notice was issued at 10:00 p.m. That’s when Krista learned that 70 Mile was under order too.
For some people, The Knock came at 1:00 a.m. An RCMP officer standing outside. A bleery-eyed resident quickly tying on a robe. “You gotta pack. You gotta go now.” No time for niceties, for chats, for the delicate exchange of information, for explanations. “You gotta go.” As people drove north in the darkness, they encountered no traffic coming south. Only their own headlights cast a wavering beam into the smoke. Ash rained down; behind them, the sky glowed an ominous red. The smell of wood burning was inescapable.
“We would get people coming into the store: ‘Oh my God! Oh my God!’ It was the pure relief that the store was still open,” Krista recalled. I understood completely. You could choose a chocolate bar, get a drink, make a purchase. Something ordinary, something you do every day, rather than running for your life and worrying about how much destruction you would encounter when you got back. What would it be? Scorched earth? A cabin reduced to rubble? Instead: Hey, the lights are on. A familiar face behind the counter. Krista said, “I don’t know how many people I consoled. I don’t know how many hugs I gave.”
In the midst of the exodus on July 29, she had a realization that knocked her breath away. Her daughter Hannah’s stuffed bear, called Bear, and her blankie were in their trailer at her parents’ place at Green Lake—behind the lines and inaccessible. “So our daughter doesn’t go anywhere without Bear,” Miguel interjected, looking at me solemnly and then pausing to let the full effect of this situation sink in. As a parent who had years ago undertaken several retrievals of stuffed animals, I comprehended immediately.
Krista is nothing if not resourceful. She discovered that Carolyn, a friend of hers, was headed out to her daughter’s place at Green Lake to retrieve some things. A few people were apparently still being allowed to assist with the removal of property. Carolyn had worked at the store when Krista was three. “That’s how long I’ve known her,” said Krista. “So I asked, ‘I know it’s silly but will you pick up Bear for me?’ ‘Oh honey, 100 percent,’ she said.” Krista explained where Bear was and at about 4:30 in the morning, Carolyn arrived with Bear and Blankie in hand. Krista wept with relief. “At this point I was a mess. I had consoled everybody else, but I was toast.” Half an hour later, she finally went to bed.
This wasn’t the end of Bear’s saga, however. Between Bear and Hannah lay not one but two barricades—one checkpoint at the crossroads of Highway 97 and North Bonaparte Road and the other at the junction of Highway 97 and Highway 24. Krista did not have a pass. If she went through a checkpoint without one, she would not be allowed back in. But she found out that some of the RCMP officers who were working in her area were actually staying in 100 Mile. So the next day, she asked one of the officers, a woman, as it happened, “Would you please drop this off?” Without hesitation the officer said, “Yes, I can do that.” Krista gave her the bear and Blankie as well as an address, and that evening she delivered both to Hannah.
“Must have been the funniest delivery ever for an RCMP officer,” I said. “She was a little saving grace,” Krista replied.
That day, July 30, was memorable for another reason: Krista saw the Canadian Armed Forces roll into 70 Mile. It was about 7:30 in the morning and she’d had only a couple hours sleep. She was struggling to rouse herself to alertness when the tanks arrived. “How did you feel, when you saw them?” I asked. “It was just like shit just got real. Like it just got real. I thought it was kind of cool. People said to me, ‘How can you say that it’s cool?’ It was like, ‘In all honesty, my life is pretty rough right now. Haven’t seen my kids for a while, haven’t whatever.’ So you want to know what? I took five seconds and thought to myself, ‘Wow. That was cool.’ Because in that moment there wasn’t a lot cool. No, there wasn’t a lot positive.”
Miguel, who had been working all night on structural protection at the Chasm sawmill, had come off his shift and was driving home. He’d been up for twenty-four hours. “I was in zombie mode,” he said. He’d just reached 70 Mile when he saw the line of army trucks rumbling south. The Canadian army had left Williams Lake to help the RCMP with evacuations and staffing at the checkpoints farther south. “There were close to fifty vehicles that came down the road. I sat there for five minutes watching,” Miguel said. Probably the most striking were the armoured personnel carriers, some complete with a gun turret. They looked like tanks, but instead of treads they had four wheels on each side. Later, Krista took a picture of a soldier in one of these vehicles, pulled up to the gas bar in 70 Mile, waiting for a fill up—a most unusual sight for Canadian eyes. Krista became friends with the fellows she called “my army boys.” They put up tents across the highway from the store and Krista let them use her washroom and shower. “We got close,” she said. “One guy had a baby and showed us the pictures. Then he came back for another stint and he showed us updated pictures.”
The store remained open while 70 Mile was under evacuation. Not only did it continue to supply groceries to the fifty or so residents who had remained behind, but it was a hub of information. Good information was at a premium, so that was critically important. Ray Paulokangas, who was evacuated from his home at Tin Cup Lake on the night of July 29, made a point of stopping at the store after leaving his house. By talking to other evacuees as he was gassing up, he found out that the only way out was north and that he was supposed to register at the evacuation centre in 100 Mile. At one point, an RCMP officer with whom Krista was friendly warned her that the police were going to be stricter about making sure that residents who were still staying in 70 Mile kept to their own property, The officer said, “While North and South Green Lake are on lockdown, 70 Mile is on do-whatever-you-want.” The officer made clear that things would become a little tighter and the rules would be enforced. When she was talking to people about their food orders, Krista passed on the message. She kept a Facebook page on which she posted the latest news, from official government and other sources. She also gave people her cell phone number if they wanted updates. She told them, “I don’t want to talk, but send me a text and I’ll give you an update. There were a lot of people at South Green that had no information. It was so hard that way.”
The fire never got closer than fifteen kilometres away from 70 Mile, but when the wind blew, Krista always worried that it would come through. And the Elephant Hill fire had been known to travel fifteen kilometres in one day. “We tried to make the best of it,” Krista said. She worked at keeping up her morale and that of others. Although her “army boys” had enough rations to survive, she sometimes gave them a home-cooked meal or brought over coffee or peaches or cherries. “Alicia was one of our staff that was here the whole time,” Krista recalled. “About the end of August she said, ‘I really see how much the store influenced the whole community.’ Maybe that’s because I’ve grown up here in a small town and I know what it’s like. It could have been a whole different feel around here. We could have just stirred this up to a little festering pot of negativity. But instead we delivered peaches.”
At last, 70 Mile got the all-clear on August 15. The Dusty Rose Pub opened for business that day; the next day, Makayla and Hannah came home after eighteen days away. This time, the village almost returned to normal; full recovery, however, would take much longer.
The Vieiras had a few astonishingly madcap-busy days, but overall, business was down during their fire summer. I can report, however, that when we visited in February 2018, Bear was still thriving; I noticed Hannah solicitously washing him in the sink. And in a follow-up phone call, Krista told me that in August of that year, business was very lively due to the mushroom pickers who came in to take advantage of one of the fire’s parting gifts—a huge crop of morels.