The mayor of Lytton, B.C. is encouraging residents to return to their properties to sift for belongings as debris removal and cleanup of the fire-razed village gets underway.
Jan Polderman said there will be a time limit in place for sifting as sites will need to be “totally remediated” before they can be opened up and the village can rescind the state of emergency declared last summer.
“I’m hoping that with the debris removal we’re going to start to provide a sense of optimism that we’re going to rebuild,” Polderman said Tuesday at an event kicking off the next stage of Lytton’s recovery.
“With that I’m hoping people dream about what this town can and should look like in the future.”
On June 30, 2021, a massive and unrelenting fire forced about 300 people in the small southern B.C. village to evacuate and watch as the flames destroyed houses, a health centre, a post office, the grocery store, and more.
Two people died, more were injured, and many of Lytton’s residents remain scattered in hotels, with family, or in the handful of homes still standing in the community.
On Monday, the B.C. government announced $18.4 million in new funds to cover the costs of debris removal, archeological work and soil remediation for the municipal properties, and properties belonging to the “uninsured and underinsured.”
The funds will cover more than 200 properties. Cleanup began Tuesday at municipal properties while residents sign waivers allowing crews to access their private homes.
Since the disaster, the municipal, provincial and federal governments have all been criticized for the slow pace of Lytton’s recovery.
Polderman said delays have been due to a number of factors, including 87 days spent waiting for toxicology reports and safe work procedures and two months spent sifting through the wreckage. Catastrophic floods last November also wiped out the roads, hampering efforts, while the winter brought on “the biggest dump of snow” the mayor has observed in 33 years.
“The roads only reopened on the 27th of January here and there are still load restrictions and delays,” Polderman explained.
“We spent the last month working out the final details on how to finance the debris removal and the heritage permitting issues. That brings us to today.”
The new funds, coupled with $9.3 million already provided by the province, have “settled” a number of obstacles, he added.
Environmental and construction teams have now begun the debris removal, along with the process of removing toxins from the soil. One team was procured by the Village of Lytton, and the other, by insurance groups.
A team of archaeologists has also been hired to identify and preserve any findings in the process, as Lytton was built on an area of cultural importance to First Nations in Nlaka͛pamux territory.
“I am hoping that the village site will be remediated and turned back over to the residents at the beginning of September and then it will be the residents’ job to get their builder in place and get the residence up,” said Polderman.
Residents of Lytton have been left frustrated and traumatized by disaster and the recovery process.
By the time Jennifer Thoss was able to return to sift through her own property, she said it had already been looted. Among the items missing were her childhood horseback riding trophies.
“I don’t have a lot of faith in the system. Once bitten, twice shy I guess. I definitely want to be in control of my own debris removal process,” Thoss told Global News.
“Aside from the loss of life and homes, it’s definitely been one of the most I daresay traumatic parts of the process, is just being kept out of it.”
While expressing her frustration, Thoss said was “extremely exciting” to finally see shovels in the ground in Lytton.
Jessoa Lightfoot, a former mayor of Lytton who lives just outside the village, said the “fire storm” has changed their lives “forever.”
“I peeked around my house and saw billowing black smoke. We packed up our go bags and went down the road,” she recalled. “A half hour later, there was like 30 of us there, and it was like, ‘Oh my god, oh no oh no. It’s going down.’
“We could identify house by house what was being burned … It was just sick to our stomach, it was so hot.”
As Lytton begins to rebuild, Lightfoot said she has a number of questions about the provincial funds and the plans for the community. She said it’s not clear who is considered “underinsured,” for example, and whether the service providers and businesses that were previously in Lytton still plan to rebuild there.
“Lytton used to be a service centre for 2,500 to 3,000 people,” Lightfoot explained. “We still want to know, does Interior Health plan to rebuild a facility that will give us the same service as we had before?
The sooner Lytton residents have answers the better, she said, as they’re keen to help in whatever ways they can.