“Our little town is gone.”
That sums up how Edith Loring-Kuhanga feels after a wildfire last week ravaged the community of Lytton, located where the Fraser and Thompson rivers meet in southern B.C.
Kuhanga, a former Greater Victoria School Board chairwoman, is in Langley helping to co-ordinate a group of evacuees from the blaze.
She said the site of the village is now “complete devastation.”
“It’s a pretty important place to a lot of people, so it’s pretty devastating” she said. “In an instant like that your life changes forever.”
She was at home in the village when the fire started, although it didn’t seem like much to begin with. The house — which was destroyed — was owned by the Stein Valley Nlakapamux School, where she works as the administrator.
“Lytton is not a very big place,” Loring-Kuhanga said. “It’s only about six or seven blocks long. The fire started down by the railway tracks at the south end of town.”
Loring-Kuhanga was conducting an interview on Zoom when she first noticed the fire.
“I looked out the window and I thought: ‘Oh well, it’s not a big deal.’ I saw a little bit of smoke.”
Then a member of the local school board called and surprised her by saying it was time to evacuate.
“It just happened so quickly.’
Luckily, her suitcase was packed for a trip to Victoria.
“I just quickly threw my laptop in my briefcase and ran out the door.”
After going back to fetch her purse and rushing out again, she realized how much the fire was spreading. Then came a huge explosion — she believed it was a propane tank — that turned the sky grey and black.
“It was like a horror movie. There were things flying all over, debris flying all over the place, the wind was blowing, and everybody was just running and screaming ‘Get out! Get out! Get out!’ ”
People were going up to houses to make sure everyone knew what was happening, Loring-Kuhanga said.
“That’s when you really started to see the fire, it was almost like it was jumping.”
She was asked to help set up a muster station at the local school about eight kilometres up the road, where everyone was being told to head.
“We set up a registration area, got water out for people and I went in and started making sandwiches in the home ec room.”
From there, people were moved farther away to Lillooet because the fire was moving so fast.
The group left in a caravan of vehicles for the 45-minute drive. About 250 people call Lytton home, and with reserves in the area there was a total of about 1,000 evacuees, Loring-Kuhanga said.
“We packed everybody we could in,” Loring-Kuhanga said.
She said she has since done an international array of interviews about the fire, including one from France, one from Germany and one with CNN.
“People know about Lytton because we had record temperatures three days prior to the fire.”
Loring-Kuhanga said an acting chief from the Lytton First Nation said it was hot enough that he had apples that were baking right on the tree.
