When Penny Dixon drove down the hill into 100 Mile House on Saturday with her dogs Teaka and Maisy, she says tears were streaming down her face.
“I was shocked at myself. I’m not that fall-apart person and yet I just cried all the way home,” she says. “All the firemen are waving … it was one of those things that I wish I could have videoed, but you can’t drive, video and cry at the same time.”
When Dixon first evacuated from her home in 103 Mile, she says she was sleeping in her truck with her dogs in the parking lot of the Iron Horse Pub. After a TV crew interviewed her, she says she got an offer from Ed and Denise of Cariboo RV.
“They said, ‘We’ve got a trailer - it’s not great but you are more than welcome.’ So I went and they had it all set up with water and power so I could have a shower, and a great yard for my dogs to run in and they just spoiled me rotten and fed me every day,” she says.
“It was incredible. They don’t know me and I don’t know them,” she says. “It sounds like it is not even true they were that wonderful.”
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By the time the evacuation order was rescinded, Dixon says the couple, despite running to the trailer to tell her she could go home, was reluctant to see her go.
“They said you can go home at 2 o’clock and then they went, ‘we don’t want you to go, we want you to stay.’”
Despite being “treated like royalty” Dixon was anxious to get home. In the first few days following the spread of the fire, she had heard a rumour saying the fire had swept through 103 Mile, starting at the trailer court and then working its way up the hill.
While not true, the Gustafsen fire did come close to the 103, stopping on the west side of Highway 97.
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Dixon’s house still smells like smoke, despite the clear air outside and due to a loss of power in the 103 community, everything in her fridge has spoiled.
“It’s just rank, everything has gone bad,” she says.
Her next step, now that she’s aired the house and put the dogs in the back yard, will be getting rid of the fridge and cleaning the walls to rid the house of the smokey smell.
When she’s able to do it without crying, she’ll also be back in Lone Butte to thank the pub and her hosts.
But for now, she’s just happy to be back.
“I’ll kiss the walls, I’ll kiss the floor. I just wanted to come home.”
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