I’m really thankful that I’m not in charge of deciding when an area receives an evacuation order or alert.
The fires are very clearly a huge threat to our towns and cities. Over 40 homes have been lost, numerous other structures in just the Cariboo Regional District alone. Nevermind the damage to ranchers, in terms of lost cattle, burned fences and feed or the damage to the logging industry in terms of the amount of loggable wood that’s simply been burned. The tourism industry’s vital season has all but shut down. Even beyond that, some of our landscapes that drew tourists in will be scarred for years to come.
Driving south out of Williams Lake, it’s very clear how close the fire was to both Williams Lake and 150 Mile House. Driving around 100 Mile, you can see how close it got to the Mills and 100 Mile itself.
With that level of destruction, it’s very clear that human lives would be at severe risk and it’s quite likely lives would have been lost without any evacuations.
However, there’s a second level of destruction that’s much less visually apparent. As long as orders are in place, none of the businesses can operate. Collectively, this is costing our communities millions of dollars every single day. Even once downgraded to alerts, insurance companies won’t provide insurance meaning real estate agents can’t sell homes and car dealers can’t sell cars. Additionally, the more residents are away from home, the more costs there are for the Emergency Social Services, the Red Cross, host cities and more.
Consequently, the economic pressure to not only lift the evacuation orders but also the evacuation alerts is tremendous.
Just like the fire can, keeping the orders and alerts in place can have the potential to devastate our communities.
Furthermore, even when the fire is not an immediate threat, the smoke can cause health problems and death, especially for vulnerable populations such as young children and elderly people. We’ve seen officials cautioning people with young children or with health conditions to stay away when the orders lift. However, parents and others may often not have a choice as they’ll often be expected to return to work as soon as the orders lift.
Lifting the orders, even when it’s safe to do so, may further complicate efforts to fight the fires. People may get in the way on lakes when aircraft need to refill on water, start new fires when resources are already stretched too thin and force those fighting the fire to pay attention to public safety.
In short, there is no right decision on when to put an order or alert in place or when to remove it; only wrong decisions, or at least wrong for someone. Lifting orders and alerts is going to put people’s health at risk, leaving them in place puts the economic viability of our communities at risk when they’ve already been hit very hard.