The Kookipi Creek fire has quadrupled in size since Friday morning, spurring the Kanaka Bar Indian Band and Lytton First Nation to join the Fraser Valley and Thompson-Nicola regional districts in issuing evacuation orders.
The blaze has gone from an estimated 2,000 hectares in size to nearly 9,000 hectares in size, threatening Lytton, Boston Bar, the Nahatlatch Lake area, and the Fraser Canyon community of North Bend.
Boston Bar has already lost several hydro poles from the fire.
Boston Bar resident Chad Hedges, who is on alert rather than evacuation, said the floods, fires and winter power outages combine to create “never-ending stress.”
“It feels like it’s a never-ending cycle and if you don’t get used to it, it’ll end up consuming you. It’s fear from everything nowadays,” he told Global News on Friday.
“If the government handled Boston Bar the way it handled Lytton, I would have to move to another place because we’re just not looked after out here in the country.”
Emergency Management Minister Bowinn Ma has assured British Columbians that the government has mobilized every resource to combat wildfires, protect homes and keep people safe.
Hedges, however, feels that rural areas don’t receive the same level of attention as urban centres.
“There are just no tax dollars being sent up here,” he said after a night of staying up and checking in on neighbours.
“The town looks after each other. There are people that don’t have communication, so we had to go back and forth.”
Goran Kurtagic of the Pinantan Lake Fire Brigade, who was stationed in Boston Bar on Friday, said the situation is “scary,” but he’s happy to be of service.
Kurtagic was dispatched from the Kamloops area on Thursday night, and told that some workers for Canadian Pacific rail — now CPKC — needed rescuing from Boston Bar.
That evacuation hasn’t taken place yet, he told Global News, but he and his colleagues are on standby with several buses.
Global News has reached out to CPKC for comment.
Lytton, meanwhile, has issued an evacuation alert in relation to the Kookipi fire.
The village is also grappling with the Stein Mountain fire, which has prompted evacuation orders from the Lytton First Nation and Thompson-Nicola Regional District. Alerts are in place as well.
That fire is now 637 hectares in size and has been burning since July 12.
Another four fires are burning out of control around Lytton: the Texas Creek and Ponderosa Creek fires, and two unnamed fires.
An unnamed fire is burning out of control east of Boston Bar as well.
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