The Precipice / Stillwater / Hotnarko Fire
Fred
Precipice, July 7–8
Monika and I live at the very western edge of the Chilcotin, where the Hotnarko River drops steeply through the Coast Mountains toward Bella Coola and the Burke Channel. Our valley is called the Precipice because of the organ-pipe basalt columns—evidence of the Chilcotin’s volcanic origins—that rim its northern edge. The valley is a bit of an oddity in this country, which is otherwise wild and mountainous. Six kilometres long and an average of half a kilometre wide, it is hung at an elevation of 800 metres. This puts it roughly halfway between the harsher Chilcotin and the lush coast in altitude, and it has a climate somewhere in between. Right below our property is the boundary of the Tweedsmuir Provincial Park.
Our home is off-grid, and isolated from the interior of British Columbia by thirty-five kilometres of bush. A rough tote road and a logging road get us to the small community of Anahim Lake. From there it is another three hundred kilometres of lonely highway to the city of Williams Lake. We like our isolation and use the internet only sporadically so it is understandable that we would not be immediately aware of the number of fires that broke out on July 7.
When Monika noticed the plume of smoke to the west of us, I was not much interested and did not encourage her to report the fire, saying that it was probably already called in. Monika was more concerned than I. She had to make a few phone calls before connecting with the wildfire office in Bella Coola. They had not in fact been informed of the fire and wanted to know the colour of the smoke and how big it was. We estimated it to be two to four hectares but really had no idea of the actual size (in fact it was likely much smaller). The smoke was pale grey. Thus our fire became VA0778, the Precipice/Stillwater Lake/Hotnarko Fire. It probably would never have received the name “Precipice” if Monika had not explained where she was calling from.
I am not sure why this fire did not concern me from the outset. I should not have been so cavalier or naive about it. I had experienced fires before, the first going back to my childhood in Saskatchewan. My dad and uncles had lit a stubble fire in the spring after a heavy fall harvest. There was too much dry straw to work into the soil so they decided to burn it before cultivation. The fire was lit on a calm spring morning, on a small rise over a kilometre from my uncle’s house. Siblings and cousins were assembled to help. We each had burlap grain sacks to fan or beat the flames as needed—an exciting outing for a child of ten years.
The fire occasionally flared in the deeper straw and then crawled lazily between swaths until it reached more dry material and again sprang into life. For an hour or so it spread slowly within the perimeter of our wet sacks. But winds like fire and fires love wind. The field sloped from the crest of land where we had started down toward my uncle’s homestead, which was nestled behind a ring of aspen and spruce trees. The stubble was much thicker on the lower slopes, where more retained moisture resulted in greater yields. At the same time as the flames found more fuel in the denser straw, the winds picked up and began driving the fire toward the homestead.
Gentle laughter and conversation was replaced by shouts and screams of alarm. We could not attack the front of the fire as the smoke quickly robbed our breath, yet I remember rushing in to do what I could whenever I spotted a weak spot at the front of the fire. Voices came and went depending on the whim of the blaze as it captured our words in mid-air and sent them skyward with the smoke.
The adults, in a desperate panic, tried to create a fire-break between the raging stubble fire and the ring of trees. My uncle drove our tractor, pulling a disc plow between the flames and the homestead in order to try to mix some of the straw into the ground and thus reduce available fuel. However, the ground was much too wet. The tractor got bogged down halfway across the swale at the bottom of the long slope. Not only was the homestead in danger, but now we had a tractor stuck even closer to the advancing flames. I think it was the sense of panic and worry in adults that so firmly embedded such a memory into the mind of a child. I can still feel the intensity of the adults’ fear more than my own fear of the fire.
But the flames weakened as they descended the slope where there was more shelter and less wind. It was also combatting wetter soils and straw. We were able to move in with our charred and ragged sacks to stop the fire before it reached the stranded tractor. I had a huge sense of pride in having contributed to the defeat of that fire.
I had three other brushes with out-of-control blazes. The first was when I tried to burn down an old house on my farm in the Fraser Valley. I had started dismantling the house piecemeal, but it seemed such a lot of work, and I thought putting a match to it would be easier. The garden hose I had readied for emergencies proved utterly useless. The flames flew high into the sky and started to spread to a nearby tree. I was able to dampen the fire as it licked up the branches, but I had to let the house burn out of control. Fortunately, it was over within an hour. I didn’t fear the fire itself, only worried about the repercussions of authorities descending on the farm, giving me holy shit and fining me an outrageous amount of money.
Twice in the Precipice we had land-clearing fires get out of control. There is only a very narrow window—sometimes a matter of days—between it being too wet to burn because of the snow, and too dangerous because the forest is tinder dry. On both occasions, by dint of a great deal of panicky exertion, we were able to subdue these fires, not without some damage to my pants, socks and long underwear as I attempted to stamp out the flames.
It was not these experiences that made me so indifferent to the Precipice Fire, however. I was not arrogant, thinking that I could fight any fire. I put it out of my mind just because I did not want to be bothered by it, especially when it seemed so far away.
Monika and I had been slowly creating a small farm in the Precipice. We engaged volunteers to help us with the chores and to build some infrastructure. Over the years we had constructed a barn, a chicken coop, a greenhouse, a recreational building (called the “pool room” because it housed a pool table), two cabins, and three sheds. In July 2017 we had two volunteers from a French wood engineering school who had arrived a couple of weeks earlier, and a couple who had been on our farm in the past and returned for two months. The four young people were bonding well and I planned on using their help to build a machine shed and a new root cellar. I wanted to get on with the summer and, as far as I was concerned, a fire was not a part of the equation.
Monika, a recent German immigrant to Canada, in her early sixties, grey hair, cool eyes, and classically German in her concern for detail, was aware that the winds of summer blew predominantly out of the southwest—putting us in a direct line with fire VA0778. She phoned Lee Taylor, the rancher who owned most of the valley. Lee, in his early seventies, had severely injured his right knee in the spring, and had been lifted out by helicopter. He was undergoing rehab in Vancouver under the close supervision of his wife, Pat. Lee—the most knowledgeable about the area and very proactive—phoned two helicopter services and the BC Wildfire Service to see if anyone was doing anything. West Coast Helicopters (with a base in Bella Coola) had seen the smoke but had not been able to get authorization to attack the fire. Whether they could have stopped it on that first day would be debated most of the summer. Lee desperately wanted to be in the valley to help protect our homes, but Pat wanted to ensure he recovered sufficiently from his injury before he returned.
The next day I continued to try ignoring the fire. We had just completed a first cut of hay on the meadow next to the house. Matilda and Florian, the French couple, were beginning the strawberry harvest. Tabi and Katie had arrived four days earlier and were settling in to one of the cabins. We have a greenhouse built in terraces against the slope of a hill, and I spent the morning watering, tying tomatoes and generally putting things in order. I planned to have Tabi and Katie look after the crops in there throughout the summer.
I heard a soft whine, an alien sound that I could not place. I exited the top of the greenhouse to search for the source. Tabi and Katie had purchased a small drone just before coming to the Precipice and were down in the meadow below the greenhouse, doing trial flights. They were trying to capture pictures of the plume of smoke that hovered on the western horizon. I was annoyed by the strange mechanical sound that had interrupted my work. Little did I know that mechanical sounds were to dominate our summer.
Late in the afternoon we heard the dull throbbing of a helicopter from White Saddle Air approach from the west, circle our meadows and begin a descent. At the time this was not a common event, and Monika and I walked with some excitement to the edge of the swirling downdraft. Two red-shirted Forestry people and the pilot came to greet us.
“Are you Monika who reported the fire?” asked one of the two women. “I’m Kerry from Forestry’s field office in Bella Coola, and this is Sally from the Cariboo District.”
“I’m Jim,” said the pilot. “This is my second trip to the Precipice this year. I was the one who airlifted Lee in the spring.”
We were never to have an unfriendly visit from the people involved with this fire. There would always be great concern for us, often with stern warnings about the dangers—the fire’s heat, its speed and its smoke. This first visit was typical. They had just flown around the fire and they asked who was in the valley. We told them that there were four volunteers with us, and Caleb was caretaking the Taylor Ranch four kilometres to the east. They advised us to leave. We explained that we and Caleb would not likely be going. Caleb had worked at the Precipice for many years but had recently left; however, due to Lee’s injury, he had been contracted to come back for the spring to feed the cows and keep the ranch running smoothly. He was reclusive, independent and resourceful, with a healthy disrespect for authority and an unbridled contempt for incompetence.
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 irrigation ditch. We laid one mainline hose to our home (a log house built in the early 1980s) and another to the greenhouse. The greenhouse was at the very edge of our property right next to the forest. David J had fought forest fires in the past and suggested we fall trees above the greenhouse. I cast my eyes across the slope of well-spaced pine sprinkled with the statelier Douglas fir. It was an area that I was very attached to, having spent nearly eight years removing beetle-killed trees, building log fences and cutting trails. I knew there was a danger to the greenhouse but I decided to leave things as they were. The hose extended just beyond the greenhouse. With the proper nozzle, the system could throw water thirty metres into the forest. In my naïveté, I figured that was protection enough. David J allowed that if I kept the forest floor wet I might be able to get away with it. I had brief visions of standing firm against a raging blaze. My ten-year-old self was rising to the challenge. But when I tried using the hose, I realized how difficult it was going to be manipulating it single-handedly through stumps, fence and trees, while fighting the pressure of the water.
Monika and I were dazed by the pressure. We had nothing but our green meadows to protect us. We had no idea how we would save our place if the fire came upon us as, driven by the westerly winds, it surely would. Our four volunteers huddled in a group next to the garden, debating whether to stay or to abide by the evacuation order. Their loyalty to us was evident, and their emotions torn. Katie’s dad was a firefighter from Manchester, England, who had already been apprised of the wildfires in British Columbia and had seen pictures of the destruction. He was unequivocal. “Get the hell out of there,” he had emailed her. “It’s not your decision to make.”
Hans was returning to Bella Coola, and he offered the volunteers a ride to Anahim Lake where we arranged for them to stay with friends in case the situation calmed down and they could come back. Hoss remained to help make our place more fire safe. David J returned to Anahim Lake to locate more structural protection equipment. Troy and Lorrein spent the night at the Taylor house. By late afternoon the violent plume of smoke from the fire began to settle and a degree of calmness came with it.