B.C. businesses hit hard by last year’s devastating wildfires are bracing for the worst, while hoping the summer of 2018 won’t be as bad.
In Cache Creek, Chum’s Restaurant is finally on the road to recovery after a tough year.
“We had floods, then fires,” said owner Lance Ewasiuk. “It hurt a lot of us.”
The family restaurant has been an institution in the community for five decades, but when an inferno creeped closer to the interior village of just under 1,000 last July, it had to shut down during the evacuation. Staff returned to find much of their stock had spoiled and a huge cleanup was required before the business could reopen.
“We were out at least $60,000 including food loss and down time,” Ewasiuk told Global News.
Along Highway 97, Horsting’s Farm Market opened in March and is slowly regaining its regular customers after the smoke and fires kept tourists away for two months of the peak season in 2017.
“I think we are recovering full swing. This is such a strong little community,” Horsting’s employee Chelsey Nyuli told Global News. “We are on a major highway, so as long as that doesn’t get shut down, I think we’ll be doing OK.”
The 2017 summer wildfire season was one of the province’s worst, setting records in size and cost.
65,000 people were forced from their homes, while more than 1.2 million hectares burned amid a firefighting effort that cost more than $568 million.
A state of emergency was declared on July 7, 2017 and was not rescinded until September 15, lasting 70 days — the longest state of emergency in the province’s history.
“It’s just getting drier and drier and I’m hoping that we don’t get hit again, because there’s still a lot left here to burn,” Ewasiuk said.
Wildfire officials say the month of June brought near to above-average rainfall to many areas of the province, and that will dampen the summer fire forecast.
For Lance Ewasiuk, it’s a game of watch and wait.
“Everybody is concerned, we’re all on alert,” Ewasiuk said. “If we get evacuated again, it’s going to be hard, really hard.”
In the meantime, he wants everyone to know that Cache Creek is open for business.
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