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Rising from the ashes: Pressy Lake

Local residents lose home
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Lorne Smith’s and Cheryl Merriman’s charming home before the fire. Lorne Smith photo.

By Cathalynn Cindy Labonte-Smith

“I just have to get my head around this. Been crying all day. I just need a bit of time,” Lorne Smith messages me when I contact him about the tragic loss of his retirement home.

Lorne Smith and Cheryl Merriman are one of the families shattered–43 properties either completely lost or badly fire damaged in the Pressy Lake area in the Elephant Hill wildfire.

“We just retired in May and moved up here from Maple Ridge,” he says.

The couple says they’re still sleeping on a hide-a-bed and living out of shopping bags, waiting to go home. Their insurance company needs to go in first to assess the damage to process their claim before they can move forward, however, Pressy Lake has been on evacuation order since July 29.

Smith and Merriman met at work at a trucking company–he a trucker and she in administration. Both have grown children from previous marriages and have been together four years; there’s a wedding in their future. They retired in May.

“Things looked good, until July 6,” says Smith.

On July 6 and 7, they had a couple come stay with them but the smoke and fire made them nervous. They told their company to go ahead and leave since Highway 24 was the only way in and out of the community.

The wildfire decimated the Pressy Lake community; however, Smith says, “Pressy Lake is not on the [media map]. We’re old news now.”

He says he is told by his insurance company it could be up to two years before they’ll be back into a rebuilt home, due to the number of claims.

The couple lost their lifetime of possessions, so there’s no family photos, none of the antiques they’ve collected over the years, they have few clothes, they say.

“Cheryl had a bad day yesterday, so we went shopping for new clothes and shoes,” says Smith. Merriman looks down teary-eyed.

Friends put up a Go Fund Me page (https://www.gofundme.com/lets-help-lorne-cheryl), as they are both only 58 and haven’t yet started receiving pensions.

They say all they took with them was their ATVs loaded onto a trailer, their computer, passports and insurance documents, their dog, Bernie, their aluminum fishing boat on top of the truck and a small suitcase each. They say they had to leave their brand new kayaks behind.

“I didn’t even get to try out my kayak,” says Smith, adding that they had a freezer full of 30 trout they’d caught on Pressy Lake, that they’ll never get to eat.

They evacuated on July 29, but never expected that’d be the last time they’d see their home, says Smith.

“I was optimistically cautious, I didn’t think it was going to happen, but the fire leaped 5 km over the day.”

They say their home burnt down on Aug. 13, but they weren’t informed by the Thompson-Nicola Regional District (TNRD) until five days later. They’ve found the lack and delay in getting information “frustrating.”

The TNRD plans to launch a drone to survey the area for residents when weather and fire conditions allow, as well as a bus tour for residents to view what’s left of their community.

Merriman says they had to go to the Roe Lake Food Bank for cereal and milk.

“It was a new experience [to go to the food bank], I was humbled, it was weird. But I stopped thinking about myself when I saw people dropping off animals. Pets in kennels: dogs, cats, parrots, that they couldn’t take with them. The animals were crying, making a huge noise. The SPCA was there to handle them properly.

People were quilting, raising funds and feeding the fire-fighters and they didn’t even know about their own homes, she says.

“It’s been hard for anyone to get more help. One retailer I asked if they had discounts for evacuees said she’d talk to her manager and they honoured the previous discount. One said, ‘no.’ I told her the fires are still going on.”

Smith says it’s a fine balance between not wanting to be in the spotlight, but wanting people to know what we are going through.

“We haven’t slept much in the last eight weeks and haven’t slept more than four hours a night in weeks. We heard a chopper the other night and thought it was a water bomber and there was a fire. I think we have PTSD.”

They say they want to get back to the pleasures of the area before the fire: listening to the loons on the lake, being on the water, fishing and having coffee on the deck with their neighbours.

“We’re going to call it the Phoenix; rising up out of the ashes,” says Smith about the new house.