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A helicopter drops water while fighting the Brunswick Creek wildfire in Boston Bar, B.C., on Thursday.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
Fernando Balanta says he was on a trip to the landfill in Boston Bar, B.C., on July 2 when the journey took a surreal turn.
He and others found themselves trying to extinguish a fire that had started on both sides of the road, stomping on it and even using a frying pan.
But the fire, fanned by gusty winds, would not go out, as Balanta and others called it in.
The BC Wildfire Service would later identify the landfill road as the original site of the Brunswick fire that was discovered that day.
It would later combine with the Ainslie Creek blaze into a fire complex that has triggered hundreds of evacuation orders and alerts in and around the Fraser Canyon community.
“There’s already a couple of people filming it and there’s a couple people deciding to report it. So we all reported it,” said Balanta, a visitor to the town of about 160 residents, as he described the early stages of the fire.
“It just started kind of getting a little scary. [I] started seeing how it was developing and realized that this thing was potentially going to be very serious.”
In a video posted on Balanta’s YouTube channel, dated July 2, people can be heard discussing putting out the flames burning in the brush.
“Can we stomp on that?” one person is heard asking. “No, because your shoes are gonna melt after a little bit,” replies Balanta.
He can later be seen stomping on flaming grass and at one point smacking the flames with a pan. But gusts of winds fanned the flames toward him.
Balanta, who had been staying with a friend in Boston Bar for a couple of weeks, said in an interview on Thursday that it’s possible flames on one side of the road could have been put out if more people were there to help, but the other side was “completely on fire.”
The Brunswick complex has now scorched a total of about 180 square kilometres.
The latest update from the BC Wildfire Service on Friday said crews were expecting slightly lower temperatures and higher relative humidity, while warning that this “does not represent a downturn in conditions, just a two-day slight reprieve.”
“This will help moderate fire behaviour; however when steep slopes and gusty wind conditions align, we are likely to see higher activity,” the update said.
The fire service said 270 firefighters were assigned to both fires along with 17 helicopters and 37 pieces of heavy equipment.
Jagdip Singh Bihal has been opening his highway-side restaurant in Boston Bar earlier than usual to accommodate wildfire crews.
Bihal runs JB’s Drive-In Restaurant, just a few hundred metres down Highway 1, where the route has been closed due to the fires on either side of the Fraser River.
He said the fires turned ugly over the last week as the winds picked up, and he’s not seen anything like it in the four years he’s been running the diner.
Balanta said he worried about his friend’s children, peoples’ properties and their pets. He said many people in the community have already packed up and left, and he and his cohort are ready to go if the situation gets worse.
“People are pretty mixed up,” Balanta said Thursday. “I think everybody’s just hoping for the best.”
Bihal said he couldn’t get a supplier to deliver to his restaurant, so he sent people to Surrey in his own van to stock up, as fire crews have frequented the diner while in town.
He said it’s been scary for much of the town.
“Hopefully it’s going to rain and help us,” Bihal said.