Slocan Valley Wildfire Stories

It’s Darkness at Noon in Western civilization, to borrow from Arthur Koestler’s famous book. The view across Slocan Lake is literally darkness at noon, with columns of smoke billowing out from the Valhalla Provincial Park fires that are being left to burn. Our wildfire services can’t—or won’t—get their act together to follow best practices in firefighting laid down over a century. Citizens reported during the Shuswap fires last year being taken away from their properties by RCMP and the same is happening in the Slocan Valley today among those choosing to stay and protect their homes. Today at our local community gathering place, Silverton General Store, I spoke with many residents who have been evacuated.

1. Jamie Barber

One of those arrested was Jamie Barber, who has asked me to tell you his story. He has lived on a 40-acre property south of Silverton along Highway 6 for 43 years. He has poured an entire life’s energy into improving it and building the home where his first wife died in his arms of an aneurysm, and the home where his two daughters were born. He refused to evacuate when the order was first given, choosing instead to work day and night to put out the spot fires encroaching on his home and property. His house is 100 meters from an old-growth forest that he has worked to protect, with trees up to 600 years old—a rarity in these times of clear-cut logging. The former owner had spent the previous 50 years protecting the old growth stand.

When the evacuation order came, Jamie chose to stay and fight the fires. Living in the mountains for over four decades you learn a few things. He’d already set up a system that included a 100X100 foot pond with an industrial water pump and roof sprinklers on the house. Post-Covid, he built a stone shelter or cottage with a slate roof as a potential retreat. Seeing that fires were coming to within 100 meters, he got busy with a “piss can” to put out spot fires before they got out of control. When the BC Wildfire Service crew chief finally came up after two days, he showed him the most logical place to build an access road and fire break. Unfortunately some of that had to be done through the old growth forest, but it was the most logical place.

Jamie had asked BCWS for help and initially was promised two firefighters, but they never showed up. The crew chief returned and when pressed, said they were understaffed and couldn’t spare even two people. Contrast this with my question to the BCWS representative at our town hall meeting July 21, where we learned that an Australian firefighting team had just arrived: “No disrespect intended to our Australian friends, but why do we need to bring in international firefighters? Don’t we have enough people in this big province to fight fires?’ He said something like, “It’s all part of our overall resources strategy.” I said: “So you’re saying BCWS is understaffed then?” He refused to admit it then, but did to Jamie. No help was sent until a road-building crew arrived to create the fire break.

“I said if I lose my place I’ll hold you personally responsible. You promised me help and you broke that promise. I yelled at them and I shouldn’t have. But I was stressed. By then I’d worked 12 straight hours without a break.” —Jamie Barber

At the end of the day he rode his motorbike to shelter under the Enterprise Creek bridge, which is cool and protected from the elements. The fire by that time had come right up to the stone cottage, making it unsafe as a shelter. Then an RCMP cruiser spotted his bike parked by the highway and he was told he couldn’t stay there either. Then on June 23 the BCWS crew did a small back burn (controlled ignition) between his house and the forest.

Also on that day, police came to take Jamie off his land. Not just one cop but two plus the fire crew boss, to arrest one nonviolent, 70-year-old man. Never mind that under the law, you cannot be forced to evacuate your land, but apparently neither the RCMP nor the government abides by the law anymore. (If you leave and try to come back, that now seems to put you in a different category under the newly revised Emergency and Disaster Management Act, which effectively criminalizes you for re-entering your own home or land under an evacuation order.) The reason given for his arrest was that he was “obstructing” fire crews, despite having bought valuable time for them by putting in two days’ work putting out smaller fires. He thinks the real reason is that he yelled at the BCWS crew chief, which he regrets. But you can imagine the stress he’s under, working day and night—alone—to try to save the fruit of four decades’ work and his home.

Prior to the arrest, one RCMP officer, Shaun Kennedy, to his credit, stayed for two hours to help Jamie with the fires. “That’s community policing at its best,” he says. The irony was that Jamie was just sitting down at his computer to write a letter of commendation for Kennedy when the other officers showed up to arrest him. He believes the missing link in all this is a Community Liaison Officer who could act as mediator between police and residents, defusing tensions and making sure channels of communication are kept open so that needs can be met without confrontation. “There’s only three of us out there next to each other; it wouldn’t take long to talk to us all and find out what we need.”

Understandably, tensions are running high and a known side effect of smoke inhalation is irritability. So when Jamie posted on Facebook, “All I need are five guys with piss cans to help me up here,” it ironically set off a social media “flame war,” with some angry with him for disobeying the evacuation order. The same social divisions were apparent at the town hall meeting July 21^st, with people yelling at each other to “shut the fuck up.”

“I understand that it’s better for the crews if no one’s in their way. But when the cops came I said that fire break wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t for me. I didn’t get any credit for the 12 hours I bought them working through the night so they could come and build that road. I have a fully capable fire suppression system but it’s not self-drive, I have to be there.” —Jamie Barber

Jamie was up at 5:30 a.m. to start work on the fires around his land, but when BCWS fire crews finally showed up, it wasn’t until 8:30 a.m., losing three critical hours in the cool of the morning. Residents have noted that the crews are being housed in Castlegar, a 1.5-hour drive from Silverton. In my father’s day, firefighters stayed in a camp near the fire site, not in a hotel 100 kilometers away. Jamie had seen lightning spark the initial fire at Aylwin Creek on the Slocan Lake side of Highway 6 on July 18. Yet crews didn’t show up to fight it for two days, he says. In that time, it grew from “a patch the size of a tent” to 10 hectares and then overnight to 100 hectares. So much for “hit it early, hit it hard.”

Tears course down Jamie’s cheek as he talks about how his daughter Sjoekie just two days ago had a baby in the Nelson hospital, but he’s been unable to see his new grandson. His other daughter Emily, who lives in Kaslo, has a young child with a serious condition that will require the family to travel to Vancouver for expert pediatric care. Now that he’s being prevented from returning to his land, he plans to ride his Harley Davidson to Kaslo to visit his daughter there before heading to Nelson to meet his grandson.

Another shot of the smoke plume from the Nemo Creek fire. I’m standing on the New Denver side of Slocan Lake to take this photo. Photo Sean Arthur Joyce.

2. Garth Hunter

Garth Hunter is another one who was escorted off his property by RCMP, who said, “You can either go voluntarily or we can handcuff you.” Like Jamie, he’d chosen to remain on his property to fight spot fires and protect his home. The BCWS crew chief called the police on him. Just as the Cooperman report said of last year’s disastrous treatment of both the fires and the people affected in the Shuswap:

“Sometimes, more resources are poured into evacuation efforts and construction of blockades than are implemented in suppressing wildfires. This could be solved simply by providing training, resources, and support for community protection groups to take responsibility for on-the-ground fire protection as we have done in the past.” —Jim Cooperman [1]

Garth is the very picture of a 1960s hippie, not the negative stereotype so often depicted in the media, but a soft-spoken, kind man. He and his beloved late wife Maryse homesteaded on their land south of Silverton for four decades. Now in his 70s, he’s as active as ever, constantly working to improve his property. Often he can be seen in town wearing his steel-toed boots and hardhat, and on one occasion he happily volunteered to help me with his chainsaw when I needed some tree limbs cut. Yet I couldn’t even hire a high school student to help me out.

He watched with alarm as candling trees on Aylwin ridge were “popping and banging and throwing down limbs into the avalanche chute” near his property. He put out the spot fires this caused there. Again, little sign of presence from firefighters.

“I took a midnight walk along Red Mountain Road and saw a wall of fire, just a wall of fire. I started packing up but then I thought, how do you choose from 40 years worth of stuff?” —Garth Hunter

Rather than “obstruct” or hinder BCWS firefighting crews, Garth granted them access to his property and showed them all the access roads and trails and nearby Hemlock Creek, where he gets his water supply. He told the fire chief he has tens of thousands of dollars of agricultural equipment and doesn’t want to lose a lifetime’s investment. But of course he was told he had 10 minutes to leave. When the police officer came he asked for an apology for being reported like a criminal simply for asserting his right to stay and defend his property. Garth asked for his supervisor’s phone number but was refused. It seems his mistake was leaving his property to check on a friend in Nakusp on Friday the 19^th. Yet the policy isn’t consistent. Jamie never left but was still forcibly taken off his property by police.

“I said, I don’t want to be hustled or railroaded by you. He said, I’m tired, just shut up and do what I tell you. I said, I’d like to know if the people who hire you are hiring adults because you don’t seem like one to me.” —Garth Hunter

Like Jamie, Garth has a lot of life energy invested in his home and property. This isn’t about real estate value or net worth. This is about memories, about the love a person pours into a home. Having spent much of the past several decades with his beloved wife Maryse, he believes her spirit is still there close to him. “She reassured me this place won’t burn,” he says.

A sadly consistent picture is forming of a tendency to treat civilians as criminals, as was seen last year in the Shuswap, when RCMP put spike belts across blockaded roads to prevent residents getting to their homes. Yet those who did find a way past saved their homes, while BCWS burned out 176 houses, cabins and structures and damaged 50 more, according to the Cooperman report. (See my previous post, “Yet Another Summer of Fire,” for links to reports.)

I won’t go into it here, but I see a much larger agenda going on—the bigger picture behind the Big Picture. Because it’s like this: You have only two reasons for the way wildfires—and the people whose lives are affected—are being mishandled: 1) Incompetence. Plenty of that going on. But it’s been 7 years since the Chilcotin wildfires, with 3 or 4 expert reports on why the failures occurred, yet nothing has changed. That leaves: 2) Intent. Is there some reason the government wants people burnt out of rural areas? Maybe I’ll delve into that topic another time. Meanwhile, PLEASE SIGN THE COOPERMAN PETITION. We need drastic change in the way we fight fires in BC and we need it NOW. Let’s push this petition into the hundreds of thousands.

Sean Arthur Joyce