As Fire Looms, the View from Inside a Tiny Town

The aircraft churned through the Fraser Canyon night like an alien spectre, twin spotlights illuminating its surroundings but leaving its own bulk obscured.

Only when the spectre drifted in front of a wall of orange did the oblongated form of a helicopter reveal itself.

That helicopter, dropping water on the blazing hillside, offered a spark of hope for the small Fraser Canyon community of Boston Bar.

Ten hours later, Boston Bar would be evacuated as crews braced for a potentially terrible day of fire weather and assessed the changing dynamics from the overnight growth of the blaze.

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When I stopped briefly in Boston Bar Wednesday evening around 11 p.m., a future evacuation order seemed almost inevitable.

Two weeks earlier, the Brunswick Creek fire had broken out on the western side of the river and forced the evacuation of hundreds of rural and First Nation residents, including those in the small community of North Bend.

Across the Fraser River, the unincorporated, highway-side community of Boston Bar sits on a small bench in the Fraser Canyon. Home to about 200 residents, Boston Bar is a modest regional commercial and service hub.

By Wednesday, the flames were less than 1,000 metres away from the village site.

Yesterday was incredibly hot, with temperatures reaching 36 C. The heat, coupled with increased wind, boosted the intensity of the fire in the canyon.

By late evening, flames were shooting high into the air from candling trees in some places, and a broad band of orange suggested the flames were inching down the mountain, toward the Fraser.

While Boston Bar remained under an evacuation alert, fire crews worked to control the fire. Dozens of backhoes, caterpillars and log-fellers — critical equipment used to create fire guards — were parked on a highway pullout outside of town. Inside town, dozens of Ministry of Forests pickup trucks lined the street outside Boston Bar elementary school, which had become something of a security-patrolled headquarters for local crews.

A kilometre away on the opposite side of the river, the red and white lights of municipal fire trucks strobed in front of glowing orange terrain.

And as the flames chewed through trees on the mountainside, the helicopter shuttled between the Fraser River and the fire.

Other fires across the province

Two weeks ago, embers from the Brunswick Creek fire blew to the east, across the Fraser River, and spawned a second blaze, the Ainslie Creek fire. That blaze grew rapidly, destroyed part of a rustic lake resort, and barrelled to the east, leading to evacuation alerts across a huge swath of land along the Highway 8 corridor, northwest of Merritt.

The two fires are now considered part of the same Brunswick Creek complex. BC Wildfire says 369 firefighters, 88 structure protection personnel, 20 helicopters, 41 pieces of heavy equipment, are assigned to the blazes.

Thursday morning, Highway 1 was closed between Boston Bar and Lytton. Around the same time, Boston Bar residents were ordered to evacuate to the south.

The scene in Boston Bar could be repeated elsewhere this week.

On Wednesday, a fire began on Signal Hill south of Pemberton, prompting an evacuation alert for the entire village site, and an evacuation order for a mostly uninhabited area just south of town. In an update Thursday, BC Wildfire said the 10-hectare fire was “burning in heavy timber,” and that nearby structures weren’t currently at risk.

Near Pemberton, Highway 99 remains open, but the evacuation alert for the town suggests the highway could close to through traffic if conditions worsen.

The fire situation there and elsewhere is liable to change quickly today.

Temperatures in Boston Bar are expected to be in the mid-30s today and tomorrow, with wind gusts of up to 60 km/h possible. Showers are possible, but so too are thunderstorms. Daily highs are expected to be 30 C or higher for the next week.

The province is warning that the coming days could be troublesome, as the weather could lead to intense, uncontrollable fire activity.

There are 32 wildfires currently burning in the province, but BC Wildfire has said lightning could start more than 100 fires over the coming days.

Fire danger across most of the southern part of the province is high, with pockets of extreme danger in the Okanagan and Thompson valleys, as well as the province’s northeast.

The dry, southern interior has seen numerous major fires over the last decade, with hundreds of structures burned.

The blazes hint at the high fire danger in the area — but they could also provide some assistance to fire crews. BC Wildfire said the spread of the Brunswick Creek fire has been reduced as it began to push into territory that the Kookipi Creek blaze has burned just three years ago.

The dynamic is increasingly common, with a major fire in the Fraser Canyon last year also running into burn scars that reduced its spread.