Update: Meeting with Evacuees at Emergency Services Centre slated for 2:30 Saturday afternoon.
Cariboo Regional District Chair Al Richmond said at the meeting people will be given options to go to Prince George, Quesnel or even to drive to Vancouver.
Original story
Insane.
That’s the word Cariboo Regional District manager of protective services Rowena Bastien is using to describe the wildfire situation in the Cariboo.
“The Cariboo district right now is the priority in the province,” she said as she addressed hundreds of evacuees at the emergency operations centre presently set up at Lake City Secondary School on Carson Drive in Williams Lake Saturday morning.
Bastien warned as the day goes on and temperatures increase the fire activity will get worse and told evacuees if they need to use emergency services they will be relocated to Prince George. People who don’t have a vehicle will be transported by bus.
“Prince George is not currently effected by fires, they have a much larger base of places that they can house people in, and it will reduce the pull on resources for the firefighters that are here working here for you,” she said. “Last night we were told by the Cariboo Fire Centre they are begging, stealing, and borrowing every last piece of manpower they can.”
Bastien told them in all the years she has been working she has never seen anything like this in the Cariboo before.
“In 2010 we had a lot of fires, but this is insanity, it’s scary and it’s for us unprecedented …. I can guarantee you that everyone is doing absolutely everything we can to either find, put out, stop fires and look after people.”
On Friday she said she was finding out about fires faster than she could write them down.
“Never have I seen that. I spoke with someone on the phone this morning who has 44 years experience on the job and he has never seen this he said.”
The area is getting hundreds of fire crews coming to help, she added.
When asked Bastien confirmed that no one can return to evacuated areas at this point.
Manager of community safety Dave Dickson said people have evacuated from 100 Mile, 108 Mile, Lac La Hache as well as the Likely, Horsefly Lake area to come into the ESS centre.
A reader pointed out tha Likely and Horsefly Lake are not affected at this time and they thought Dickson meant the Likely and Horsefly roads from Miocene and 150 Mile House.
“We are asking them to come here and register then we can give them their next steps,” Dickson said, noting more than 1,000 people have registered so far and 100 people slept at the centre Friday night.
“Thanks to the volunteers this is happening,” Dickson said. “They have their own home lives and have given that up to help and we are very grateful.”
If anyone wants to volunteer they are asked to come to the school and talk with Emergency Social Services manager Kylee McCarthy.
“If they could pop by and give their availability to Kylee she would be grateful because I think this will go on for many days realistically,” Dickson said. “So we could have shifts and plan. Many hands make the job light.”
Here are some excerpts from the meeting Saturday morning.