'Everyone just started running': evacuee describes rapid spread of B.C. wildfire
CBC
A B.C. man affected by the Downton Lake wildfire northwest of Whistler says he and a few of his neighbours dodged the fast-moving flames in the nick of time on Tuesday.
"It was very sudden," said Paul Kennea who was checking on his cabin at Gun Lake, just north of Whistler, B.C., on Tuesday when the wind picked up, and the nearby wildfire spread swiftly.
"This wind came through that I've never experienced in my life. It was like heat, and a whirlwind, and a tornado all mixed into one. They were giant branches flying through the air ... and it really suddenly got quite hard to breathe," Kennea said.
Kennea had moved his family out of their cabin on Gun Lake Monday evening, although there was no evacuation order in place at the time.
The latest on B.C. wildfires:
The Downton Lake wildfire sparked on July 13, and had slowly made its way through steep, wooded terrain at the western end of Gun Lake, northwest of Whistler, B.C., before it flared up aggressively on Monday.
Kennea had returned to his property to check whether his family's makeshift fire suppression system was working, to turn on the sprinklers, and to retrieve a few priceless family possessions.
He ran into a few neighbours while he was there and at first, he said, the fire was simply a glow in the distance.
But in less than 90 minutes, the situation changed drastically.
"We all kind of looked at each other, and then this wind literally blew us off our feet again and the fire was right there and everyone just started running," Kennea said.
The group jumped in Kennea's truck, and as they stopped to check that another friend had left his property, Kennea said they saw deer running out of the woods to escape the flames.
Kennea said that if the group of neighbours had waited another 10 minutes, they may have had to swim out of the fire's reach.
An evacuation order was issued later Tuesday for the more than 200 properties surrounding the lake and quickly upgraded to critical. Residents have been told to leave for Lillooet or Whistler, which is about 110-km away.
The fire has destroyed at least five properties around the lake, although officials haven't been able to access the area to fully assess the extent of the damage.
The Rachel Notley government's consumer carbon tax wound up becoming a weapon the UCP wielded to drum the Alberta NDP out of office. But that levy-and-repayment program, and the wide-ranging "climate leadership plan" around it, also stood as the NDP's boldest, provincial-reputation-altering move in their single-term tenure.