Book review: Life behind the lines of B.C.’s 2017 wildfire season
Credit to Author: Stephen Snelgrove| Date: Fri, 06 Dec 2019 19:05:46 +0000
Captured by Fire: Surviving British Columbia’s New Wildfire Reality
Chris Czajkowski and Fred Reid | Harbour Publishing
$24.95, 320 pages
Two-thousand-and-seventeen was a tough year for B.C. wildfires, setting records for number of blazes and area affected.
While the numbers (1,300-plus fires blackening 12,000 square kilometres) were impressively higher than any ever recorded, 2018 saw both records broken. Last year, 2,087 fires burned out-of-control across the scorched province, reducing 13,480 sq. km. to ash.
Two-thousand-and-nineteen, due to unseasonable summer rains, saw significantly lower numbers.
But there is no reason to expect many repeats of this year’s relatively modest fire record. According to Natural Resources Canada, “fire-prone conditions are predicted to increase across Canada.” Many of those conditions are created by human-caused climate change.
The firestorms of 2017 displaced over 65,000 people. But not everyone who received evacuation orders obeyed. Some folks remained stubbornly behind the fire lines, hoping to protect their homes and animals. Captured by Fire tells, in their own words, the stories of two of these tough rural residents who refused to be evacuated, Chris Czajkowski and Fred Reid.
Both authors live in the remote areas between 100 Mile House, Williams Lake and Bella Bella. Czajkowski is a freelance writer with a dozen books to her credit, most turning on her adventures living in the wilderness. Reid, on the other hand, has been a farmer all his adult life, and played a key role in setting the B.C. standards for certified organic farming. Faced with official orders to flee, both chose to stay and fight the fire (and sometimes provincial officials) to protect their homes. Stitched together from their memories, emails, sketches and photos, their alternating chapters provide an exciting and moving account of life behind the fire lines.
They also record the mutual aid and solidarity that emerged among rural residents and firefighters, little moments of human decency and mutual support that ranged from the offer of coffee to offers of help in pumping water up from ponds and rivers to protect residences. Both authors agree in their respect and affection for the front-line firefighters, although they do have some critical comments to make about official failures of communication and logistics.
Chris Czajkowski and Fred Reid, above, are the authors of Captured by Fire: Surviving British Columbia’s New Wildfire Reality. Photo: Jade Dumas
Captured by Fire can be read for adventure stories and for B.C. history. It can also be read as useful background material for the public debates we need desperately to have about climate change, wildfires and public safety.
Tom Sandborn lives and writes in Vancouver. He welcomes your feedback and story tips at tos65@telus.net