Update from local Fort St. James resident Stacey Parcher Karey - Special to the Caledonia Courier

The official word last night on staying in the community post-evacuation Order, is that ALL children must leave. This is a serious emergency event. If you plan to stay, and you have children, they must be sent out. This way they are safe (which is the primary focus), and they are not a distraction to you while you are in a high stress situation doing the work you feel you need to do.

The meeting tonight (August 15, 2018) consisted of a panel of community leaders and fire suppression representatives to provide updated information for the community and to take questions and provide answers.

Nak鈥檃zdli Band has taken a proactive approach by voluntarily evacuating 299 members over the last two days and will evacuate several more tomorrow. Tomorrow they will begin shutdown of their offices and will be operating with minimum staff, and evacuating women and children. Their main priority is to get their community members out safe.

There鈥檚 a bus that leaves daily at 1:00 pm and the offer is open for anyone who needs a ride.

Attention was drawn to the numbers of people who would be on the one road all at once at the time of an evacuation order and people are encouraged to get ahead of it and go now.

Mayor Rob MacDougall stated the best interest and safety of the residents is the priority of all of the community leaders.

Incident commander Jim Richardson, provided an update and prefaced it with, 鈥淭here鈥檚 nothing worse than rumours; nothing worse than hearsay鈥�.

Tomorrow [today] will be day one for the new incident management team (IMT). They will be reviewing evacuation alerts and orders to get situational awareness fully up to speed. Their first priority will be trying to find out where the fire is.

They can鈥檛 fly helicopters in so they are running scientific models and weather predictions to get a model of what the evacuation alerts and orders would look like.

The base of the fire is approximately 10 kilometres west of Endako, which was the point of ignition.

It runs a North East move an parallel鈥檚 to the North shore of Fraser Lake and is within three kilometres of Fraser Lake; paralleling the Barlow on the Southern boundary.

The northeast corner is 17 kilometres due west of Echo Lake and is 15 kilometres from its north point to its south point.

鈥淚t was estimated at 50,000 hectares a couple of days ago but it鈥檚 bigger than that now. It鈥檚 a very large and very angry fire.鈥�

It鈥檚 moving from dead pine into regenerated forest so that will help to slow it down.

There are 108 people working on the backend and working their way forward. The fire was really aggressive today [yesterday] and last night on the northwest corner.

鈥淲e were in a dogfight there all day with air tankers, scooper air craft and helicopters,鈥� to keep the fire from getting any closer to Fraser Lake.

30 plus pieces of equipment are working building guards. The pipeline is the guard they don鈥檛 want it to cross and they want to hold the line north of that.

An additional 80 firefighters and additional helicopters have been requested.

There are 15-16 fires like this one burning in the Province on top of the other 450 and resources are stretched thin.

There are firefighters from Mexico, Australia and New Zealand to help. The primary focus will continue to be Fraser Lake for now. There are 55 pieces of fire apparatus in the area and a high level water distribution system is being organized to support structure protection like sprinklers and water cannons.

鈥淭his is avery complex emergency situation,鈥� Larry Watkinson of the Office of Fire Commissioner-Structure Protection said.

The Teardrop Road is confirmed to be washed out but is currently being worked on. A question was asked about how far sparks can jump a fire guard and the response was 4 kilometres.

An Evacuation Order will bring travel restrictions to residents but they will do what they can to help people move their livestock out.

The incident management team is using trigger points and are trying to give one to two days notice and will have certain sections go on notice as trigger points hit.

The RCMP have a full complement of 18 officers now and should have 21 today. They have also asked for an additional 20 and will request an additional 40 officers from Alberta if the situation becomes more of a longterm event.

Police will be the last to leave and are dedicated to meeting security needs. Once the town is cleared, they will continue to patrol to assess needs and to deter looting.

When [and if] the evacuation order comes they will begin with evacuating those areas most effected.

The resounding message was that is is much better to voluntarily evacuate now while the paved highway is still open and there is less stress.

As stated in last night鈥檚 post, the RCMP have been pushing for the issuance of an Order.

Today, along with community leaders, they will continue to apply pressure to get an order.

If you leave now, make sure to have identification with you, as you will need it to register a the CN Centre in Prince George.

All people from this area are on evacuee status.

As stated before, it is much better to use the highway. The message is to lean in the direction of an expectation that that will not be available for too much longer.

NOTE: Karey has been attending regular (fire update) community meetings and posting her take-away from those meetings on facebook. This information has not been confirmed by Black Press.