Darren and Adrienne Lemky are some of the few people who stayed inside the evacuation order in Williams Lake to serve the community.
Initially, the couple said they stayed behind because they had to fight fire behind their own house.
“It was in our backyard,” Adrienne said the fire near the airport July 7. “We were fighting it with shovels and buckets of water.”
The couple worked through the night Friday and into Saturday, July 8 as the fire jumped two guards and zeroed in on their home.
“It’s amazing what you can do. I can’t believe I was carrying five gallon buckets of water.”
By Sunday there were enough resources in place that fire crews from the BC Wildfire Service assisted in putting out the fire with ground crews and a helicopter bucketing water.
“If we wouldn’t have stayed we would have lost our home and probably the neighbour’s,” Adrienne said. “There just wasn’t enough people – the whole town lit on fire at the same time. We were thankful to the fire crews for putting out the fire and they were thankful to us.”
Since that brush with disaster, the two decided their skills would be put to good use at the city during the emergency, where Darren works as a mechanic and ensures the back up generators are working and in good order. Adrienne, who works for ICBC, has been volunteering her services eight hours a day as a receptionist at the Emergency Operations Centre.
“They needed the help,” she said of why she’s volunteering.
Between his work as a mechanic and Adrienne’s time answering calls from concerned evacuees, the two managed to carve out a few moments yesterday to have lunch together and look forward to everything returning to normal.