Being a tourist on a roadtrip during a state of emergency and non-essential travel ban
Summer is fire season in Canada and forest fires are a natural and frequent occurrence. Canada has resources, processes and habits in place to battle forest fires and people react to them rather relax. In the past we've been sipping a drink at the beach of the lake with my family, while observing planes putting out a fire across the lake. They had been on evacuation alert for over a month just before that with a fire going on on top of the mountain above them. When the Eagle Buff fire broke out in Osoyoos just before our departure, I just got the response that they hoped we'd not get too much smoke. We've seen how nature recovers and new forest arises near Marble Canyon in Kootenay National Park before, where 15 years after a raging wild fire, forest was all back. Even more: with hindsight the park rangers have learned in the National Parks that they've been too fierce in the 20th century to fight forest fires and avoid them and that they in fact had hampered a natural cycle that is needed. In the recent decades, forest fires are sometimes lighted in areas that have been without them for several decades.
But....
But....
But in 2023 5% of Canada has burned down, which is 600% of a normal year and more than double the previous record of 1989. (source: Natural Resources Government Canada) . "Fire season" started remarkably early and was partially the cause of our grey skies in Europe in July. For several years already it is known that Canada is hit hard by climate change and is warming up twice the global average. There is a huge concern as the enormously forested country might become a CO2 creator at this speed with forest fires so much out of control, even accelerating the process quicker, rather than being a CO2 absorber. That is a catastrophic thought.
The number of smoke days for Canadians has risen strongly ...and the effects on the long term health is yet to be determined.
The number of smoke days for Canadians has risen strongly ...and the effects on the long term health is yet to be determined.
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Pokémon Go warnings
So...the summer of 2023 was catastrophic, and we were in the midst of it.
BC Wildfire app...after Waze probably my most consulted app during our vacation showing the over 400 fires in the province
In our second week of vacation there, we were yet another unbelievable heat wave in a country that was already on extreme drought measures all around. Never seen this country so dry...that even public toilets had been closed and replaced by portable chemical toilets as water preserving measure.
And yet they suffer constantly from "dry lightening" that sets new fires, as we experience quite closely in Glacier National Park. After we had left Osoyoos new fires had broken out more north in the Okanogan and to my shock fire sparks had flown across Okanogan lake, setting the two sides of the lake on fire. The Okanogan's biggest city Kelowna, which we love much, was partially under evacuation.
More north of that, around Shuswap lake that we intended to visit after our departure in Revelstoke, was all on fire as well. Our route Highway 1 was closed due to fires all around....much of the region was under evacuation.
So each night, when we returned to our hotel room after a nice visit, the news emissions became more ominous and explicit. The government had declared a state of emergency on the entire province. News hit Belgium too, and our mothers were quite worried we'd be unsafe. Naturally we'd never take any risks so we were tracking news diligently, checking road conditions and BC Fire notifications multiple times a day. The closest we've been to a fire is the one in Edgewater, BC that we spotted across the valley. In Cranbrook, Revelstoke and other towns there were some across the mountain at 15-30 kms from us.
And yet they suffer constantly from "dry lightening" that sets new fires, as we experience quite closely in Glacier National Park. After we had left Osoyoos new fires had broken out more north in the Okanogan and to my shock fire sparks had flown across Okanogan lake, setting the two sides of the lake on fire. The Okanogan's biggest city Kelowna, which we love much, was partially under evacuation.
More north of that, around Shuswap lake that we intended to visit after our departure in Revelstoke, was all on fire as well. Our route Highway 1 was closed due to fires all around....much of the region was under evacuation.
So each night, when we returned to our hotel room after a nice visit, the news emissions became more ominous and explicit. The government had declared a state of emergency on the entire province. News hit Belgium too, and our mothers were quite worried we'd be unsafe. Naturally we'd never take any risks so we were tracking news diligently, checking road conditions and BC Fire notifications multiple times a day. The closest we've been to a fire is the one in Edgewater, BC that we spotted across the valley. In Cranbrook, Revelstoke and other towns there were some across the mountain at 15-30 kms from us.
But the Shuswap / Okanogan region went from bad to worse with 6 fires of note and increasing rapidly each day. This is a north-south region we'd have to cross to go back to the west of the province to catch our flights in Vancouver a week later. Local airports had been shut down and the day before we'd have to drive by, a non-essential travel ban got declared. Tourists were asked to leave the area as soon as possible and were forbidden to book/use accommodations in Osoyoos, Kelowna, Vernon, Kamloops, Penticton and Oliver. We had our hotel booked in Kamloops, at safe distance of all fires.
What to do? Highway 1 was closed, but the detour south of Salmon Arm and Shuswap via Vernon was still open and fire free. Would that remain open? Should we extend our stay in the east or rush to the west while we could? Would the situation start to improve or would it continue to worsen as it did over the last days?
What to do? Highway 1 was closed, but the detour south of Salmon Arm and Shuswap via Vernon was still open and fire free. Would that remain open? Should we extend our stay in the east or rush to the west while we could? Would the situation start to improve or would it continue to worsen as it did over the last days?
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Highway 1 closed running through evacuation area's with active fires
Well, I must admit that I did not sleep well that night. Stress did hit me, and seeing the breaking news banners repeating on the tv screen all night didn't help. While we were still at our idyllic mountain resort cabin with hot tub surrounded by magnificent mountains, we had to decide. Our hotel in Kamloops reacted quite laconic when we had called to ask what to do, whether we were allowed to keep our booking and check in given the non-essential travel ban. Yes, we were welcome. Hmm, well at least we had a place to stay.
Jan rolled his eyes when he saw me checking the news articles all evening. I was reading a lot of stories of the evacuees fleeing the region and didn't feel well to keep our plans unchanged. But I also feared to get stuck in the safe east if we didn't travel. We decided to go and see how it went. Jan however had already a back-up plan as he had checked hotel availabilities in our next destination and new there were plenty of rooms available still. We'd not sleep in our car somewhere.
Jan rolled his eyes when he saw me checking the news articles all evening. I was reading a lot of stories of the evacuees fleeing the region and didn't feel well to keep our plans unchanged. But I also feared to get stuck in the safe east if we didn't travel. We decided to go and see how it went. Jan however had already a back-up plan as he had checked hotel availabilities in our next destination and new there were plenty of rooms available still. We'd not sleep in our car somewhere.
We started to drive through the Selkirk mountain range to the west. Smoke only hit us towards Sicamous where the highway got closed and diverted south in the direction of Vernon. There smoke was very thick in such a way that it irritated my eyes with my sunglasses on inside the car! For all trailers that we crossed, I couldn't help wondering if they were tourists leaving the area or evacuees. We drove by the beuatiful Mara Lake Provincial Park where we once played with baby Kabouter on the beach and now it seemed so gloomy and sad in the smoke. We just kept driving and driving except for one needed sanitary stop for me. When approaching Kamloops, all of a sudden wind and valley changed and the sky cleared up entirely. In a bright blue sky and super clear view over the big Thompson river valley and the big urban city, we arrived at noon at our hotel, since we always plan maximum half a day driving on our road trips. The hotel repeated that we were welcome to check in, since we'd be gone in 24h anyway but that due to the non-essential travel ban, we could without any issue cancel our booking.
"It's not a choice, it's the law" were the emergency minister's words on the news that kept hammering in my head. It felt wrong to be here and I was in no mood to do any visiting in the city of Kamloops (neither to spend an afternoon reading a book in our room). Jan was in the same mood and after a few phone calls he had managed to let us check in a day early at our next destination...which was another half day drive.
I hate full days of driving but we were in a state of emergency and we'd do the right thing...leave this area and the accommodations to the evacuees. After all, it would safe us doing any driving the next day.
"It's not a choice, it's the law" were the emergency minister's words on the news that kept hammering in my head. It felt wrong to be here and I was in no mood to do any visiting in the city of Kamloops (neither to spend an afternoon reading a book in our room). Jan was in the same mood and after a few phone calls he had managed to let us check in a day early at our next destination...which was another half day drive.
I hate full days of driving but we were in a state of emergency and we'd do the right thing...leave this area and the accommodations to the evacuees. After all, it would safe us doing any driving the next day.
Navigating in between the multiple out of control fires at safe distance
And so we arrived in the evening, very tired but relieved one day early at our final destination of our vacation...in the Olympic mountain resort of Whistler where we'd stay almost a full week now to decompress of all the road tripping in hopefully clear air. At least there were no fires whatsoever within 50kms from us.
As of now we could watch the news on the state of emergency, the fire fighting and evacuations with more comfort. It was good to see that the worse was over a few days later and slowly the fire fighters were making some progress and some evacuaees could start returning to their homes. Many many of them lost their houses in Kelowna and in the Shuswap region, however. In the latter, the fire is contained but not out yet. As I am writing this blog post, there are still 245 active forest fires going in the province of British Columbia...they will continue until the country is covered with snow. There have been 2246 fires this summer in this province alone (1613 caused by lightening, 565 by humans and the others have unknown causes). There are no words to describe those statistics.
Safely arrived in Whistler
Small anecdote to close off: we parked our car in Whistler and didn't use it for the full week anymore. After one week, we were blown off when opening the doors by the very strong smoke air that was stuck inside the car. When we were driving it, we were not aware how much had entered our car. Even after airing it out extensively and driving with open windows, we have delivered a very smokey rental car back at the airport with a strong camp fire smell.
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