Remy is a resident of Kamloops. In 2021 he was living in Juniper Ridge when a fire ignited near his home. Remy loves watching science fiction and fantasy movies, playing video games with his friends, and listening to music of all genres and eras: from MF DOOM to Duran Duran. For ten years, he played baseball in the springs and summers in Kamloops, pitching and playing third base. He collects comic books, loves film photography, and has a substantial vinyl record collection. In 2021 he was living in Juniper Ridge, a neighbourhood of Kamloops with his parents when a fire ignited near his home. 

It was a stormy night. There was no rain, but there’s a thunder and lightning storm. I looked at one of my friends’ stories on Snapchat and I saw them talking about a bunch of lightning hitting Juniper. One had actually started a fire.

As soon as I knew the fire was happening, I went and talked to my parents and said, “Hey, we should be cautious about this.” A couple of minutes later, we could see, from a distance, the smoke moving towards our house.

We decided to get things packed up and ready to go, in case we had to evacuate. My mom started grabbing important documents. My dad went outside in the back and started trying to water the grass and prevent anything from creeping towards our house. 

I was tasked with taking photos of all of the rooms in the house. In case anything were to happen, we would be able to show what we had so that we could make insurance claims on it. I also collected the cat and made sure she was safe and ready to go with us as well.

I heard some people yelling about the fire. I could smell the smoke. It smelled like trees burning, but it was thick and heavy. From my back deck, I could see the fire. The wind was blowing closer and closer toward our house.

I could hear people rushing their families to get out. I could hear sirens all around. There were tons of fire trucks heading towards our area because we were at a back access route to where the fire was happening. There was a large firefighter presence in the area. They were very, very keen to get us out of there as fast as possible.

I got asked a couple of times when we were leaving, if I had inhaled any smoke or if I needed any medical assistance. They were more worried about everybody who lived in the area’s safety than their own. 

When we were leaving, one of our neighbours was struggling to get themselves ready. I had a bit of time before we had to get out of there. So I went over to my neighbour’s house, helped them grab their things, and helped them load into their vehicle and get them out as well.

I didn’t feel great about having to see a bunch of my neighbours still packing their stuff, while we were getting out of there. I felt awful about that. I wanted to help them, but there was no good way to help them and myself at the same time.

We got out with everything, and we made our way up to my brother’s place in Sahali, away from Juniper. We spent a whole night there and pretty much a whole day, waiting for an all-clear to go back. 

After they had controlled it a bit and stopped it from moving towards where our house was, we were able to return. 

As soon as we stepped out of the vehicle, it hit me like a huge waft of air. I could smell a campfire immediately. I could smell the fire retardant. I could smell the burnt trees. It was a really heavy smell. Everything smelled like it was burning.

It wasn’t 100% put out. From my deck, I could see the area that was still kind of burning, and the little embers that were around. I could see a lot of tree damage throughout the forest behind us. Nothing in the way of property damage, thankfully. But there were a lot of embers flying through the sky.

The firefighters stuck around our house. They were using the fire hydrants around our neighbourhood and made sure the hoses were set up in case it picked back up again. We had the firefighters in our backyard checking in on us, making sure we were good.

There wasn’t much in the way of help that we didn’t get. But I feel like if they had opened up the secondary escape route out of Juniper through Rosehill, that would have been helpful. It would have made a lot more people not only able to get out quicker, but it would have given people peace of mind that they were not going to be in trouble in any situation. Eventually, somebody did break the lock that was on the gate. So more people were able to get out.

I now have a go bag ready in case anything like this happens again. It’s sitting in my closet right now. It’s a bag that’s got my passport and my important documents. It’s really easy for me to get some clothes in there and be ready to go when needed. I feel like a lot of people should prepare those things for just-in-case scenarios. I’ve noticed that a lot more people set up the tops of their roofs with sprinklers so that they can just turn them on and attempt to protect their houses a little bit better.

The wildfire made people scared for the rest of the summer. It put a damper on the summer for people wanting to do things in the neighbourhood. It would have been nice to have a neighbourhood support group so people could talk about it more and explain their side of things. Talk about their experiences, how they felt, and just be able to have that communication with other people.

I tried to talk with all of my neighbours about it and make sure that they were okay, seeing if they needed anything, even if it was just somebody to talk to. We do have a couple of neighbours that are older and their family lives far away and they’re living on their own. I wanted to make sure that if they needed any help with anything, I could be there for them.

It made me take a closer look at what was going on, not just in Kamloops itself, but around the whole world. It made me more aware of climate change as a whole and more conscious of what kind of humanity as a whole is doing to this world.

This story is a part of a series created by Thompson Rivers University students and led by instructor Jennifer Chrumka as part of the Climate Disaster Project. 

The post ‘There was no good way to help them and myself at the same time’ appeared first on The Wren.

Diego is a fourth-year journalism student who has lived in Kamloops for just short of twenty years. Inspired by the late chef Anthony Bourdain, who travelled the world documenting other cultures through food, Diego wants to spend the rest of his life travelling the world, hearing other people’s stories and writing about them. Diego also uses film photography to express himself, having worked with the medium for the past seven or eight years. At the time of the 2021 Juniper Ridge fire, Diego was living with a friend in an apartment in Sahali and working long hours at the Kamloops Airport.

It was a pretty dry summer. It was one of those summers where you could feel exactly how dry it was in the air. It was quite smoky. It was thick, strong, and permeated everything. The smoke didn’t really move around, it just sat in the valley for months. At the time, I was working at the Kamloops Airport so I was outside quite a bit. The airport’s tarmac, pavement, concrete, it all gets really hot. Generally, on clear days, it’s about twenty degrees hotter than the air temperature because it sits in the sun all day. It gets pretty draining and I was always tired and a little bit out of it.

I kind of just accepted that between work, the weather, and the smoke, that it was not a summer for me to enjoy. Every day was just another day. Every month was another month. We were still in lockdown so everyone was just waiting for something to happen. That’s how I ended up sitting on my deck watching the storm at the apartment in Sahali that I shared with my friend. 

It was Canada Day, 2021. I got off work at about 2:30 p.m. and was looking forward to relaxing for the rest of the day. It started raining so I decided to sit and watch the rain, watch the lightning, just listen to it. I grew up in Vancouver and rain can be grounding and helpful in centering yourself. Kind of like getting in sync with the universe. 

I remember that the rain was loud. Big, heavy raindrops were just battering everything they could possibly reach. I sat out there watching it for about an hour before the lightning started getting quite bad and frequent. Just a barrage of lightning every ten to fifteen seconds, constantly beating down.

There was a bit of a gap where there was almost no lightning strikes at all, and then there was one really big one. Something about it clicked within my head. It’s like my intuition knew exactly where that lightning hit. 

The first thing I did was call my brother to see if they had seen it. He told me that it struck thirty or fourty metres from our backyard, and everything around it caught fire immediately. We live right at the bottom of the neighbourhood, right against a big parkland, which gets quite dry. The real desert part of the desert.

My brother and my mom were packing up our stuff. 

My dad went out and set up a bunch of sprinklers to make sure everything was wet while they waited for the fire department to show up.

Everybody in the neighbourhood saw the fire. The fire was called in to emergency services quickly. I didn’t expect it to get as bad as it did, even though it was dry, and things were bound to spread.  Everybody in our neighbourhood was told to evacuate with no warning or notice. Just leave. Everyone thought they were going to die and felt like they were stuck. 

I immediately decided to have my family come to my apartment  based on the phone call with my mom and brother. There didn’t seem to be any better option at that point as they would’ve been sitting in a parking lot with everyone else from the neighbourhood waiting to hear about the state of the fire and when they’d be able to return.

After ending the phone call with my brother, I called my roommate and let him know the whole Juniper Ridge neighbourhood was being evacuated. My parents, my brother, our cat, and all of our stuff were going to be there when he got home from work. They were going to stay with me until they were allowed to go back. 

There was next-to-nothing about the fire on the news or social media until my family arrived at my apartment. The fire was hanging over everyone’s heads, creating an unnerving state of unknowing which was definitely difficult. 

My family finally got to my apartment around seven or eight that night. We only have one road in and one road out of Juniper so the highway was completely congested and it took about an hour, or an hour and a half, for them to arrive. It was a stressful night for me as I had worked overtime that day and was supposed to be working again the next morning at 4:45 a.m. No one slept. We stayed up anxiously waiting for any updates. My family ended up staying with me for about seven hours before they were allowed to return home, at about 3 a.m. the next morning. 

I live in that Juniper Ridge house again now. It definitely changed my perspective on how to handle situations like that. We’re ready to go and always prepared at the beginning of the summer just in case it happens again. We pack not just a go-bag with things we’d actually need, but stuff that we actually want to make sure we’re keeping. The things that I care about the most that are valuable in a lot of different ways, but mostly valuable to me. My books, comic books, my laptop, cameras, all of my film negatives, my extra equipment if I have room for it, clothes. Probably not all the things I’d need, but things that I wouldn’t be happy if I lost. That was definitely something we changed. 

I think preparing helps me feel ready to deal with anything that would come. But the possibility of it happening doesn’t give me good feelings. It definitely doesn’t feel good to prepare in the anticipation of something that you don’t know whether or not it’ll happen.

I don’t think I can see the fires in any positive way. At this point, it’s just part of the routine in Kamloops. I don’t think it’s going to change anytime soon.

You can’t stop a wildfire by yourself. I hope people become more aware of how quickly fires can become a threat, how fast they move, and how quickly they’ll destroy everything in their path. I think it’s really important that people know how to handle those situations when they come. Being prepared, knowing where to report a fire properly, making sure you’re aware of the things that cause fires so you’re not contributing to it. Just in case. 

I think there’s a lot that could be done about climate change that would make massive differences. Tangible efforts really need to be made. Every person has a carbon footprint. Every person should be doing their part, making sure we don’t destroy our planet. 

Every time I meet somebody who feels the same way as I do, or even as strongly as I do, it is really encouraging that things might start changing. As for whether or not things will start changing anytime soon, who knows.

This story is a part of a series created by Thompson Rivers University students and led by instructor Jennifer Chrumka as part of the Climate Disaster Project. 

The post ‘Everyone thought they were going to die and felt like they were stuck’ appeared first on The Wren.

Shekainah is a student at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, Canada. Originally from Sri Lanka, she moved to Kamloops in April 2022 to pursue a bachelor’s degree in communication and digital journalism. She grew up on the coast in Colombo, the capital city of her home country. “There are many lakes and rivers back home. A lot of houses are built on marshy lakes because of how close it is to the sea,” Shekainah says. “It is very common for water levels to rise and flood the surrounding villages and cities.” But nothing could prepare her and her family for the rainfall that hit the country in May 2016.

Our home was my mom’s childhood home. When floods used to happen when I was little, the water would always be inside our house. My family rebuilt this home in a way that the bottom floor would be pushed back on a slope. So that if the water level did rise, it wouldn’t get to the house. Flooding was just a normal thing because there was always drainage issues, blocking, things like that. 

It was a hot season that year, and it was dry, very dry. Everyone was mostly worried about the heat. We had a drought going on.  Water levels were running low. There were power cuts because our electricity is hydro-powered. Then suddenly, in the middle of May, it started raining. Even though there were forecasts of heavy rain, there was no expectation of flooding. Colombo itself has two big rivers that tend to overflow quite often and usually, after a couple of hours, it just goes down. 

It was very gloomy constantly. Everything just seemed gray in comparison to the sunshine that we usually had. It felt like indoor weather. The smell of rain was strong and it was a little colder than usual.  Everything was wet and muddy.  Your school shoes would easily get wet. It was difficult for vehicles to be on the road because the water would be covering the tires. You really don’t want your vehicle on the road because the water was going to go into your exhaust and mess up your vehicle.

When you live in a country where the only change in weather is the rainy seasons,  you can tell when one particular season might be more harsh than the other. Mainly, by the way the rain fell, and the serious thunderstorms. When you looked at these canals, you could see the water levels rising. 

On the news, I started to see houses underwater. Some of the suburban areas had one story houses and a lot were halfway underwater. People had to evacuate their homes. It was constant reports of houses being flooded, people being displaced and landslides caused by the rain. A lot of roads were closed because trees would fall and leave debris.

I recall an instance, where on our way to school, one really big tree had fallen right in front of our school gate and blocked the entire road. The parents and the teachers had a conference, and realized that it was not safe for students to be traveling to and from school. The school itself would not have been able to hold students in case anything happened. A message was sent out to the parents informing them to keep kids at home for the next couple of days.

The water levels didn’t rise in our street as much as other places. We were continuously checking up on any friends and family that lived in any of the severely affected areas. We ended up having a relative move in with us for a while because of how high the water levels were. I could see how difficult that was for her because her whole life is in that house, and she had no access to it. Seeing her and how that could have happened to anyone, it made me think about people who probably didn’t have relatives to go stay with, people who got displaced. These floods lasted quite a while.

Because of the severity of the disaster, the government did enlist the armed forces for help in rescuing people, getting them to safety, and also giving out supplies. Once school resumed, helping out the survivors became a school project. We had a box in every class, and each student was expected to donate something. Then we’d wrap it up and we’d send it to those affected through the armed forces or through certain channels. 

After the water levels decreased, my relative was able to go back home. A lot of stuff had been ruined by the water. She was eventually able to get the house cleaned up and replace a lot of the stuff. But obviously, it did take a toll on her. In the end I think she was just happy that her house was still intact. 

I didn’t have much of an understanding back then on what climate change was. However when I look back on it now, I realize how bad it can get, and that concerns me. Because, considering how frequent these floods are, if it happened back then,  it can definitely happen again. Climate change concerns me a little more now. You don’t expect it to happen to your own country but there is a possibility of that happening to my own country as well. 

This story is a part of a series created by Thompson Rivers University students and led by instructor Jennifer Chrumka as part of the Climate Disaster Project. 

The post ‘You think it wouldn’t affect you, but there’s a very high possibility it can’ appeared first on The Wren.

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