Unfortunately, the need for the Chinook Emergency Response Society has been on hot display, this past week. The group is a wildfire resilience and response team, highly organized into 18 鈥減ods鈥� or sub-areas, with equipment at the ready and planning meetings to prepare for inevitable fires in Electoral Area E (primarily Francois Lake and Ootsa Lake and adjacent communities) of the Regional District of Bulkley Nechako (RDBN).

Elected director Clint Lambert, who was a central figure along with many of his neighbours, in the volatile 2018 spate of mega-fires in that section of the Lakes District, had no sooner reported on the society鈥檚 most recent progress when a lightning system blew through and ignited even more that are still being dealt with by the grassroots group along with the BC Wildfire Service.

鈥淲e鈥檝e already had two fairly big fires on the Southside and several small ones,鈥� said Lambert on June 22 at the RDBN鈥檚 public meeting, and that was before the weather system added to the list. 鈥淭he response has been good. I think they鈥檝e had 350 people show up to the fires that we鈥檝e had.鈥�

Some, he said, were the same people who came to multiple calls for help, but the human resources added up to that many. With the number of fires that erupted between July 5 and 8, and the confirmed rush of heavy equipment and swarms of neighbours that responded, those numbers will be be dwarfed, and still counting.

These people are putting into action the training and other resources that Chinook Emergency Response Society has provided over the past four years of its existence.

鈥淓verything is going well on that front, the society is alive and well,鈥� said Lambert. 鈥淲e鈥檝e had lots of talks with Brad Blackwell, the BC Wildfire Service commander here in town (亚洲天堂 Lake), and we鈥檙e trying to iron out how BCWS and the community can work together. It鈥檚 actually going better than expected.鈥�

As of deadline, the provincial government mapped out four fires listed as 鈥渙ut of control鈥� located on the Southside, after successful actioning of several others in the previous 48 hours. All four were reported as being less than one hectare in size. Two others were listed as burning but under control.

Another 鈥渙ut of control鈥� fire was listed south of Houston, one at Endako, one 75 hectares in size near Fort St. James, one 14 hectares in size at Finger Lake south of Vanderhoof, and a cluster of six in the Ulkatcho region mostly in the northeast borderlands of Tweedsmuir Park.