By Peter Kelly
Late August is upon us and wildfire season is in full swing. For several months, many areas of BC have not had significant rain to temper the threat of raging wildfires.
Climate change is the culprit and we’re all to blame. But that’s what has led to stunning extremes to our climate patterns here and around the world. For us, it means tinder dry forests by early spring and ashes by the time the rains and snow return in the fall.
It isn’t new, but it’s getting worse. Those of us today are left to mitigate the effects of this not-so-slow moving trainwreck.
A lightning strike, a cigarette butt or campfire sparks, broken glass by the side of the road and wilful acts of arson are some of the human causes of these fires. But that’s less significant to the fact that once lit, they gotta be put out.
The good.
This should be every coherent person asked to curtail their water usage in a fire zone, asked to pack up and leave their homes in a mandatory evacuation, and of course the thousands of firefighters send to the fire zone.
I’m told that fighting a wildfire is far different than a structure fire (home, business, etc)…sure, of course it is. What’s important to me is that thousands of hard working folks suit up in some of the hottest, dangerous working conditions possible, and attempt to blunt the spread of the fire..that it may burn out or get doused with rain.
There are a lot of potential things than can go wrong. Loss of houses and businesses, farm animals and other wildlife being the product of such a wildfire. Its a shitty thing when it happens. It’s even shittier when any one of the above tragedies happen as a result of either carelessness or wilful defiance of fully legal evacuation orders.
To be clear; a government authority can’t just order an evacuation for no reason; only as a result of an general emergency declaration can such an order be made.
This was done. The Province made a declaration of a state of emergency, and local governments made their subsequent evacuation orders.
To be fair, regardless of how stressful or inconveniently this may have been, overwhelming majorities complied and packed enough for a couple days and hit the road as instructed.
But not everyone.
There will be holdouts, to be sure. Folks determined that they know how to better defend homes and farms (etc) from fires than firefighters have been known to defy evacuation orders. That’s a problem because the residents are often ill-equipped for a fire spreading at storm-force winds at several thousands of degrees of literal fire. They go from a behind-the-line nuisance, to being in need of rescue when they could have left in an orderly fashion.
Evacuations happen because they don’t want anyone to die. This isn’t hard.
It’s far better scenario to attend or donate to a rebuilding fund for those who lost all their worldly items (and weren’t insured), than it is to attend a funeral for those who lost everything.
The bad.
Fresh out of the official pandemic, government ordained emergency orders are bound to upset people. But a fire-triggered evacuation order should be seen no differently than one ordered as a result of an inbound tsunami, or flash floods, etc.
But not this time. This time, a fringe minority took it upon themselves to organize…a freedom convoy.
A Freedom Convoy.
As if to borrow from the narrative of truckers convoy that illegally blockaded the city of Ottawa and Coutts Alberta border crossing, these folks were intent on busting through legit roadblocks because freedom.
It caused serious concern with the BC Wildfire Service.
There was no need for this. Defying blockades and evacuation orders happens; but its usually in isolated incidents. This stupidity triggered a police incident.
The ugly.
The defiance of legal evacuation orders is troubling enough; but even being the most charitable, one can understand the human behaviour and frustration.
And then the BC United Party entered the fray.
They decided then and there that this was the moment to enter the fracas and take a partisan position. On fires, evacuation orders, etc.
This was the time to exploit anxiety and fear and promote an effort to undermine the safety measures being enforced under local government evacuation orders.
A tweet promoted by:
Previous BC Liberal Leader Andrew Wilkinson would have slapped this down in a hurry. Politicians should not be exploiting this at all. Emotions are running high enough; but this crew of BC Liberals/BC United MLA’s feel emboldened enough to yell this from the rooftops.
But wait, there’s more.
The stupid
After things had relatively calmed down, it was discovered that the BC United Party was pushing a partnered fundraising effort with the Red Cross (wildfire fundraising) that included a data harvesting attempt that was automatically authorized unless you looked far enough to ‘opt out’.
What made this especially insulting is that only a day previous, they were undermining evacuation order. This, along with the ‘freedom convoy’ organized to bust through police blockades – only to attempt to scoop some political credit and data from good hearted Red Cross donors.
Whomever decided these things were ok – or decided not to stop these things from happening, should probably look for work elsewhere. Totally beyond the pale.
We need to reset the dialogue please.
- Please follow emergency evacuation orders; they’re rare, so they’re for good reason.
- If you’re a politician, a natural disaster isn’t your photo-op. Promote the official opportunities to assist – which could be financial, could be blood, could be something specific – like blankets or baby food.
Shitty things will continue to happen. Wildfires, floods, earthquakes and tsunamis. We can debate things in the political arena at any time, but we should probably make sure folks aren’t unnecessarily put into harms way as a result.
We’re supposed to be better than this.
My2bits
The view from Pete 