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Captured by Fire: Surviving British Columbia's New Wildfire Reality
In the summer of 2017, wildfires dominated the headlines in British Columbia. As a low pressure weather system continued to cause lightning strikes, starting new fires, strong winds fanned the existing ones. Over two hundred fires burned in the province and nearly ten thousand people in or around the towns of 100 Mile House, Ashcroft, Cache Creek, Princeton and Williams Lake received the instruction YOU MUST EVACUATE NOW . But not everyone left. Captured by Fire alternates between the dramatic first-person accounts of wilderness dweller Chris Czajkowski and homesteader Fred Reid, who both ignored the evacuation order and stayed to protect their properties, animals and livelihoods. Living in a remote area, they knew that their homes would be of low priority to officials when fire fighting resources were deployed. Over the course of the summer, as alerts fluctuated and even the firefighters pulled out, both had to decide: when is it time to go?
- GenresCanada
320 pages, Paperback
Published March 21, 2020
15 people want to read
About the author
Chris Czajkowski
16 books25 followersChris Czajkowski is an accomplished writer and spokesperson for wilderness living. She is the author of ten books including Cabin at Singing River (Raincoast Books), Lonesome: Memoirs of a Wilderness Dog (Heritage House Publishing), Snowshoes and Spotted Dick: Letters from a Wilderness Dweller (Harbour Publishing), A Mountain Year: Nature Diary of a Wilderness Dweller
(Harbour Publishing), and Ginty’s Ghost: A Wilderness Dweller’s Dream (Harbour Publishing). Her newest book, And the River Still Sings, is available September 2014, and answers the question "How does one go from English villager to Wilderness Dweller?"
Chris Czajkowski was born and raised at the edge of a large village in England,
until she abandoned the company of others to roam the countryside in search of the natural world. As a young adult she studied dairy farming and travelled to Uganda to teach at a farm school. Returning to England she found nothing to hold her interest, so in 1971 she hitchhiked around the world spending as little time as possible in cities.
Arriving in Canada in 1979, Chris travelled to the West Chilcotin and settled deep in the woods of British Columbia’s Coast Mountains. She called her new home Nuk Tessli and lived there for twenty-three years, turning her paradise into a thriving wilderness
resort and guiding business.
In 2012, after many happy years of living alone in the bush, Chris sold Nuk Tessli, closing a significant chapter of her life.
And the River Still Sings goes beyond the tales of wilderness living, exploring both the experiences that led Chris to a solitary lifestyle and her transition to a life closer to the grid. Her new book offers personal and honest insight into the “Wilderness Dweller.”
(Harbour Publishing), and Ginty’s Ghost: A Wilderness Dweller’s Dream (Harbour Publishing). Her newest book, And the River Still Sings, is available September 2014, and answers the question "How does one go from English villager to Wilderness Dweller?"
Chris Czajkowski was born and raised at the edge of a large village in England,
until she abandoned the company of others to roam the countryside in search of the natural world. As a young adult she studied dairy farming and travelled to Uganda to teach at a farm school. Returning to England she found nothing to hold her interest, so in 1971 she hitchhiked around the world spending as little time as possible in cities.
Arriving in Canada in 1979, Chris travelled to the West Chilcotin and settled deep in the woods of British Columbia’s Coast Mountains. She called her new home Nuk Tessli and lived there for twenty-three years, turning her paradise into a thriving wilderness
resort and guiding business.
In 2012, after many happy years of living alone in the bush, Chris sold Nuk Tessli, closing a significant chapter of her life.
And the River Still Sings goes beyond the tales of wilderness living, exploring both the experiences that led Chris to a solitary lifestyle and her transition to a life closer to the grid. Her new book offers personal and honest insight into the “Wilderness Dweller.”
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 21, 2023
I typically have mixed feelings about autobiographical accounts of living through wildfire. On one hand, as someone who studies fire, I find them exceptionally helpful for staying grounded in how people actually experience these events. These accounts help to put you in their shoes, which is a useful antidote to my days of think about fire from a strictly management perspective. On the other, read any more than a couple of such stories, and you'll rapidly find that they begin to feel the same, over and over. The themes, experiences, and vignettes become repetitive and you quickly reach saturation on the perspectives.
As such, I was pleasantly surprised with Czajkowski & Reid's "Captured by Fire." It features the stories of two authors, Chris and Fred, who decide to reject the evacuation orders and stay with their properties through the heat of the 2017 fire season (NB: separate properties; these are two different stories). This perspective affords a number of useful insights for casual readers and fire managers alike, which helps to boost the rating of this book beyond where it might land otherwise.
A really useful paradigm the book offers is that of Chris and Fred's relationship with the fire. Over the course of a season surrounded by fire, they develop quite an affective relationship with the fire, describing on multiple occasions that the majority of the time is characterized by peaceful coexistence and excitement to watch how it matures (e.g., p. 159). This is very different than the relationship managers seem to have with fire, and seem to assume that those with 'threatened' properties will have as well.
This results in serious mismatches between their desired ways of handling the fire and the ways imposed by those above. Early in the season, they're confronted by both direct orders to leave and reassurances that the BC Wildfire Service "could handle the fire and would protect [their] buildings" (p. 28). More notably, though, this came with uncertainty about who would actually care for their livestock or crops - and without any ability to return to their property if things became safer but the order remained.
This last point - that if they leave once, they're gone until the orders are entirely rescinded (e.g., p. 234) - is at the heart of Chris and Fred's criticisms of the evacuation regime. Throughout the entire season, they live with a widespread evacuation order because of slow-creeping fires in the region. But, at the few moments where each does believe there's a real and present danger, and wishes to evacuate, they decide not to, because they won't be let back in during the 90% of the time when the risk is orders of magnitude lower. And, they and their friends even see, at times, a nefarious plot by the government to do things like "starve them out" to force them to leave the zone so they can be excluded from returning (p. 199). As such, as much as they want to leave in the most dangerous days, they decide not to because they know the context-driven decisions won't be reciprocated by management.
In their view, this is made worse by the government's approach to not fully extinguishing fires. They discuss throughout the book how the view of the fire management agency is that slow, gentle fire is an important preventer of future burns (true)... but this becomes something of a self fulfilling prophecy for evacuation. The authors remain caught in a double bind where the government doesn't attempt to mop up + cold out the entire fire, but also orders everyone evacuated for even the most minor of burns. As they describe,
Of course, the characterization of this isn't always fair or accurate. They describe how "the province [SK] used to fight fires diligently, but now enormous conflagrations are left to burn unless they directly threaten communities" (p. 32). This isn't quite accurate, given that we've never been able to "diligently" control fires in northern + remote Canada given the sheer scale, but it certainly captures the lived experience of those facing this new fire regime head on. There's also some very understandable, if questionable, frustration towards planning and preparedness phases in the firefight (including the fact that firefighters get safety talks and do stretches) that are critical but apparently easy to misread (p. 113).
A quick note about the writing itself. It's incredibly engaging writing, but there's a core problem in the structure. The chapters alternate between the voice of Chris and Fred, each recounting their own experience in different areas. But, because the fire ebbs and flows so much, it's virtually impossible to remember which story you're reading and where it left off. If this were a classic fire story (all building up to a single big evacuation moment), the back-and-forth format might work well. But, because there's so much ebb and flow, it feels like you're reading the same account from chapter to chapter. The book reads as singular, erasing the two different experiences.
All told, this book is a really great resource for fire managers to understand how their efforts are interpreted. If read with an open mind, it offers great insights into how the efforts of government to make responses orderly and safe can result in frustration on the ground. For example, they recount an interaction with a police officer marking properties with colour coded ribbon by the roadway to differentiate between evacuated and staying... and readily point out how this system leaves them feeling vulnerable to looters who learn the code (p. 46). Another example comes in needing to run a "clandestine clinic" in the community, when a clinic in an evacuation alert area (not even evacuation order) is shuttered and anyone remaining is threatened with arrest (p. 109-110). Being hours away from medical assistance, and unable to leave home because of the threat of not being able to return if they do, they end up needing to run their own grassroots clinic instead. And still another comes with poor timing on email updates and evacuation messages that undermine their own credibility (p. 236).
This isn't to say it's the whole story. Many of the characterizations Chris and Fred make would be hotly contested by fire managers who would rail against the silly public misunderstanding their hard work and taking unnecessary risks. But, that's why reading this with empathy is so important. The efforts of managers are not experienced in the same way by those on the receiving end as those on the ordering end. The more we can understand that reality, the better we'll be able to manage a future of living with fire.
As such, I was pleasantly surprised with Czajkowski & Reid's "Captured by Fire." It features the stories of two authors, Chris and Fred, who decide to reject the evacuation orders and stay with their properties through the heat of the 2017 fire season (NB: separate properties; these are two different stories). This perspective affords a number of useful insights for casual readers and fire managers alike, which helps to boost the rating of this book beyond where it might land otherwise.
A really useful paradigm the book offers is that of Chris and Fred's relationship with the fire. Over the course of a season surrounded by fire, they develop quite an affective relationship with the fire, describing on multiple occasions that the majority of the time is characterized by peaceful coexistence and excitement to watch how it matures (e.g., p. 159). This is very different than the relationship managers seem to have with fire, and seem to assume that those with 'threatened' properties will have as well.
This results in serious mismatches between their desired ways of handling the fire and the ways imposed by those above. Early in the season, they're confronted by both direct orders to leave and reassurances that the BC Wildfire Service "could handle the fire and would protect [their] buildings" (p. 28). More notably, though, this came with uncertainty about who would actually care for their livestock or crops - and without any ability to return to their property if things became safer but the order remained.
This last point - that if they leave once, they're gone until the orders are entirely rescinded (e.g., p. 234) - is at the heart of Chris and Fred's criticisms of the evacuation regime. Throughout the entire season, they live with a widespread evacuation order because of slow-creeping fires in the region. But, at the few moments where each does believe there's a real and present danger, and wishes to evacuate, they decide not to, because they won't be let back in during the 90% of the time when the risk is orders of magnitude lower. And, they and their friends even see, at times, a nefarious plot by the government to do things like "starve them out" to force them to leave the zone so they can be excluded from returning (p. 199). As such, as much as they want to leave in the most dangerous days, they decide not to because they know the context-driven decisions won't be reciprocated by management.
"This is the worst it's been so far," he said. His face betrayed his concern. "You have to go."
"Will I be allowed home when the fire calms down?" I asked. I knew the answer, but I had to hammer home the point."
"No."
"Then I'm staying." (p. 234)
In their view, this is made worse by the government's approach to not fully extinguishing fires. They discuss throughout the book how the view of the fire management agency is that slow, gentle fire is an important preventer of future burns (true)... but this becomes something of a self fulfilling prophecy for evacuation. The authors remain caught in a double bind where the government doesn't attempt to mop up + cold out the entire fire, but also orders everyone evacuated for even the most minor of burns. As they describe,
The worst thing, I knew, was to leave at the last minute. That is how people get trapped by fire. If the law had been different, I would have been gone long before. Instead I hung in there, prepared to flee at any moment. I leaped up every time the wind roar increased... I was stretched tight as a guitar string about to snap. Do I stay? Or do I go? (p. 237)
Of course, the characterization of this isn't always fair or accurate. They describe how "the province [SK] used to fight fires diligently, but now enormous conflagrations are left to burn unless they directly threaten communities" (p. 32). This isn't quite accurate, given that we've never been able to "diligently" control fires in northern + remote Canada given the sheer scale, but it certainly captures the lived experience of those facing this new fire regime head on. There's also some very understandable, if questionable, frustration towards planning and preparedness phases in the firefight (including the fact that firefighters get safety talks and do stretches) that are critical but apparently easy to misread (p. 113).
A quick note about the writing itself. It's incredibly engaging writing, but there's a core problem in the structure. The chapters alternate between the voice of Chris and Fred, each recounting their own experience in different areas. But, because the fire ebbs and flows so much, it's virtually impossible to remember which story you're reading and where it left off. If this were a classic fire story (all building up to a single big evacuation moment), the back-and-forth format might work well. But, because there's so much ebb and flow, it feels like you're reading the same account from chapter to chapter. The book reads as singular, erasing the two different experiences.
All told, this book is a really great resource for fire managers to understand how their efforts are interpreted. If read with an open mind, it offers great insights into how the efforts of government to make responses orderly and safe can result in frustration on the ground. For example, they recount an interaction with a police officer marking properties with colour coded ribbon by the roadway to differentiate between evacuated and staying... and readily point out how this system leaves them feeling vulnerable to looters who learn the code (p. 46). Another example comes in needing to run a "clandestine clinic" in the community, when a clinic in an evacuation alert area (not even evacuation order) is shuttered and anyone remaining is threatened with arrest (p. 109-110). Being hours away from medical assistance, and unable to leave home because of the threat of not being able to return if they do, they end up needing to run their own grassroots clinic instead. And still another comes with poor timing on email updates and evacuation messages that undermine their own credibility (p. 236).
This isn't to say it's the whole story. Many of the characterizations Chris and Fred make would be hotly contested by fire managers who would rail against the silly public misunderstanding their hard work and taking unnecessary risks. But, that's why reading this with empathy is so important. The efforts of managers are not experienced in the same way by those on the receiving end as those on the ordering end. The more we can understand that reality, the better we'll be able to manage a future of living with fire.
September 2, 2020
While not my favourite of Chris's books, this one, with alternating chapters by Fred Reid, fascinated me. Since moving to Cariboo in 1994 and to the Okangan in 2005, I have lived in areas battered by major wildfires. If you're fortunate enough to live in a region not regularly threatened by major conflagrations, count yourself lucky and read whatever you want. But if you live in an area where wildfires and climate change are dangerous realities, you will hold your breath from the first page to the last. Written from alternating perspectives of two of the major fire areas in 2017, this book is a firsthand, gripping account of what it is like to be in the path of major fires. With climate change delivering realities different from the easier environment in which most of us grew up, the book is a sobering reminder that Mother Nature is not messed with with impunity.
June 13, 2020
While I liked Chris's previous books about remote life in British Columbia, the day by day details about her and co-author's summer of fire were not that interesting to me and became repetitive. It would be of interest to those who have a connection to the area or are really interested in fire fighting. I will continue to look for Chris Czajkowski's books.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews