‘I was scared to stay there’

Bonnie is a 67-year-old retired French immersion teacher who lives in Kamloops, British Columbia. Born in Nova Scotia, she remembers herself as a shy child who was good at school and loved travelling. Bonnie says she got “the travel bug” by taking a trip when she was 14-years-old to France and Quebec. “And from that I got the language bug.” Her favourite place is Bali, but she feels most at home in Germany. In Kamloops, she spends her time in art class at the library, dancing, hiking, and volunteering. In the summer of 2018, when fire erupted in the grasses behind her Batchelor Heights townhouse, Bonnie was on a day-trip with her Probus Club, part of a network of groups that encourage retirees and semi-retirees to socialize. 

I was on a bus. I had organized a trip for the Probus Club to Kelowna to visit some wineries and the kangaroo farm. In the mid-afternoon, we’re coming back. It had been a beautiful sunny day. But as we were pulling into Kamloops, it got dark. Really heavy rain and lightning. As we’re going over the Peterson Creek Bridge, I see the Bachelor Hills. I saw a line of fire coming down the hill.

There’s two big hills there: the hill where my complex is and the hill on the other side of Batchelor. I thought “Is that the hill behind my house or is that the other hill?” I didn’t know. I was pretty sure it was mine, but I wasn’t absolutely sure. I was panicking. 

The bus stopped and they let us out at Aberdeen Mall, where my car was. I drove over. I got to the bottom of Bachelor Hill and I’m going up. It’s a whole bunch of cars going very very slow. Halfway up, the police stopped everybody.  They weren’t letting people in. We all had to turn around. I wasn’t able to get any information about what’s on fire, is my place safe? 

“Oh, there’s another way into Batchelor,” I thought. I drove down the hill, along the west side, and back up the other way. Further up, they were also stopping people. A policeman was letting a few people through. But if the address was too close to the fire, he wasn’t. When I told him my address, he said, “Oh, you’re evacuated. You can’t come.”

I phoned a girlfriend who had been on the bus with me.  They lived in Westside. She said, “Well, come and stay the night with us. We’ll put on the news to try and find out what’s happening.” They made me feel welcome and we had supper.  But the whole time I’m antsy and anxious.  We were trying to get information from the radio. We kept it on a station and we were waiting and waiting for updates and never heard anything.

That’s when my girlfriend phoned a friend who’s part of those evacuation volunteers and found out MacArthur Park was an evacuation center.  I decided to go there because they would have more information. On the way there, I decided to try driving up to my place again.

I drove up and to my surprise, all the roadblocks were gone and I was able to drive right up to my complex. All the fire trucks were in my parking lot. All the firemen were winding up their hoses. “In half an hour,  you’ll be able to come in.” 

The people who were evacuated were more stressed than me.  One of my neighbours said that she heard banging on the door and the fireman told her to get out. My other neighbours were a family. Only the kids were home. They didn’t know what to do since their parents have been telling them not to open doors to strangers. 

When I was able to go back in, it was dark. All night, some of the firemen continued tramping the hills right behind my place, putting out hotspots. There was this terrible smell. It was mid-June, so the air conditioning was on and it sucked all of the air in.  It just reeked of smoke. It was like you were at a campfire. I had to buy these carbon things, put them all over the house. It took weeks to get rid of the smell. The next morning when I went out and I saw the burnt grass. You could see how close it came to the complex, right to the road. That was when I realized, holy cow, this was close. 

After that, I was scared to stay there. I was right at the edge of Lac du Bois. It’s just complete grasslands. That’s all it is: sagebrush and grasslands. No trees. The fireman said grass fire burns really fast and travels really fast. I was a corner unit. The grasslands came right down to about 12 feet from my wall. I was scared that 3 metres away is years and years and years of dried big dry grass. There’s no firebreak. My strata wasn’t going to water that area or pull out the dried-out grass. The grasslands didn’t belong to us. 

I began clearing up, even though it wasn’t our land. I began cutting it all down for meters and meters. I thought, I’m right at the edge, this could happen again. 

The next year, they had the fire by Juniper Ridge. That night there was a thunder and lightning storm. It sounded like it’s right above my head. All I could think was, “What if there’s another fire? You’re supposed to have a go box.” I haven’t got it organized yet. So I ran around for two hours getting two go boxes ready. Then I was thinking, where do I put them? Do I put them in the garage? But what if I’m away from home again and there’s a fire? Do I keep them in my car? What if I’m broken into? 

The Monday after was one year to the fire. We got hotter and hotter and hotter and hotter. And two weeks later, Lytton burned down. That’s when I was like, I can’t live like this every summer. So as soon as Monday came, I phoned my realtor and I said, “I’m ready to move downtown.” Luckily there were two bedroom apartments available. By the end of the summer I was moved in.

We seem to be getting hot summers, dry summers and forest fires in BC far far far more often than before. I switched to an electric vehicle, religiously recycle to the point where I drive the soft plastics out to another place and I have very little garbage now. I’ve lived here since 88 and I don’t remember ever, until fairly recently, these fires near town. 

I really did enjoy living in the townhouse. It had a beautiful view of the city and Mount Peter and Paul. It was always very peaceful. I had one neighbour and we were great friends. I felt very safe. I had more outdoor space. You could just go out the door and walk the trails through those grasslands. Mixed feelings to leave that. It was because of the fires and possibility of it happening again.

This story is a part of a series created by Thompson Rivers University students and led by instructor Jennifer Chrumka as part of the Climate Disaster Project.