B.C. evacuee tally hits 43,000, military sends in more help

225 soldiers will help support police efforts

KAMLOOPS • Hundreds of Armed Forces members will support the police response to devastating wildfires in British Columbia, bringing some relief to scores of exhausted officers.

About 225 soldiers travelled on Thursday from CFB Edmonton to Williams Lake, where they will assist the RCMP with observation and reporting along access roads, help with evacuations of people in distress and assist in delivery of aid.

The members will join 150 personnel already in Williams Lake and the surrounding area, which was evacuated last week when a fast-moving wildfire approached the city’s outskirts.

Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth said he was grateful the federal government had responded to B.C.’s request to provide the military members in order to free up local police.

More than 150 fires were burning in the province on Thursday and about 43,000 people remained out of their homes. More than 3,500 square kilometres of land have been scorched by wildfires this year.

On Wednesday, Premier John Horgan extended a provincewide state of emergency for another two weeks. Evacuees are eligible for $600 from a $100-million provincial fund, and Horgan said that they will be able to access an additional $600 for every two weeks they are displaced. Former premier Christy Clark, now leader of the Opposition, established the $100-million fund less than two weeks ago and is now calling for the NDP to double it. Farnworth said the fund is currently sufficient, but the government will spend whatever is necessary on the emergency.

“This is just the start of the fire season,” he said. “I hope we get a honking big rainstorm that puts everything out, but we’re just at the beginning and so we’re going to make sure that people are looked after.”

Forests Minister Doug Donaldson was asked whether B.C. had done enough to prevent wildfires and whether he thought recommendations in a 2003 report after the province’s last major wildfire emergency had been adequately implemented.

“Some of the recommendations were acted on. Others need further action,” he said. “Today, I want to focus on the public safety aspects: people’s homes, people’s livestock, people’s animals, people’s lives.”

Rain fell on many parts of the province on Thursday, but some of the showers came with thunder and lightning. Residents of the West Bench suburb of Penticton, in B.C.’s Okanagan, were forced to flee when a small fire broke out Thursday. A couple roofs caught fire but the homes were not destroyed, said a city official.

Officials in one of the regions hardest-hit by the wildfires, the Cariboo Regional District, said Wednesday that 41 homes had been lost.

Another eight homes were confirmed lost in the Central Okanagan region last weekend and almost three dozen trailers were destroyed when fire raced through the Boston Flats trailer park next to Cache Creek, B.C. Burundi “due to ongoing political tensions, civil unrest and daily armed violence.”

Last month, the Canadian government designated refugees claims from Burundi to be eligible for “expedited processing.”

Harold Crosner, a Canadian lawyer serving as the honorary consul at the Burundi consulate in Toronto, said he hadn’t received any information on the case from Canadian officials. He noted that while it wasn’t certain the teens had entered Canada, if they had, they would have done so with “some planning and deliberation.”

“The issue that Burundians have come to Canada making refugee claims alleging ‘well-founded fear of persecution on the basis of discrimination’ is well known. There’s no secret,” Crosner said. “Whether that is going to happen in the case of these two teens, no one knows.”

“If they are here,” he said, “they’re free to contact me and I’ll pass the message onto their families ... If I can help to alleviate the fears or worries of a parent or a brother or sister as to the safety of their child, I’ll certainly do that.”