Sunday marks another day of anxious waiting and watching for residents of Lytton, B.C., with hundreds of properties under evacuation alerts or orders due to an out-of-control wildfire.
The B.C. Wildfire Service (BCWS) said Sunday that the Saw Creek wildfire, which is burning about three kilometres south of the village, had grown by about 100 hectares overnight, to seven square kilometres in size.
Highway 1 remained closed between Boston Bar and Spences Bridge due to the fire, and the Thompson-Nicola Regional District (TNRD) has declared a state of emergency in Lytton and Blue Sky County.
Fire crews spent the night focused on structure protection, and the BCWS says they were aided by cooler temperatures and light winds.
As of Sunday, more than 60 properties remained under evacuation order, while about 170 more were under evacuation alert, meaning residents must be ready to leave at a moment’s notice.
The Lytton First Nation has also issued an evacuation order for some of its residents.
The wildfire service said it was anticipating temperatures from the mid 20s to low 30s, with humidity trending lower “meaning there is the potential for fire activity to increase throughout the day.”
The fire was first spotted on Friday evening, 11 days before the five year anniversary of the 2021 wildfire that destroyed the community and left two people dead.
Speaking with CBC’s North by Northwest on Sunday, Lytton First Nation member Teresa Raphael said the situation brings back “a lot of flashbacks.”
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Raphael’s mother lost her home in the 2021 fire, and only recently returned to the community.
“It’s been a year now that she’s been back into her home, and they actually just did a little bit of a celebration earlier on, the day the fire started, for these houses in this location that were finished,” she said.
“So it’s been tough.”
Lytton residents face new wildfire threat 5 years after devastating fire
However, Raphael said First Nations communities in the area have been banding together to help each other out, and have found strength in unity.
Dean Adams lives in the Village of Lytton and said the timing of this year’s emergency was eerie.
“It was almost like the fire wasn’t finished with Lytton,” he said.
Adams lost his home in the 2021 fire, though not before making a last stand attempting to protect it with a garden hose.
“I just thought there was a grass fire, I just had to deal with that, not knowing half of the town was already burnt and I didn’t know,” he said. “I finally realized … and I said, what the hell am I doing?”
He said those memories were top of mind as he waited under an evacuation alert over the weekend.
“It’s the second time, and it’s so close to the fifth anniversary of the first fire, we’re 10 days away and it’s the same climate, windy and hot, and something strange is going on,” he said. “It’s a feeling.”
Adams said this time around people have had more time to prepare, and communication has been better.
The BCWS says it had 135 firefighters and nine helicopters assigned to the fire on Sunday, along with an incident management team and structure protection crews.
The fire is believed to be human-caused, a classification given to any fire not started by lightning.
