Stories from the Firestorm

Alice Kidd is an editor with The New Catalyst editorial collective in
Lillooet, B.C.

Many of us in rural British Columbia have had some experience of
fighting fire, whether putting out small grass fires, volunteering for
the community fire department, or working as emergency firefighters. But
the summer of 2003 changed all that. Fifteen “interface” fires
(wildfires that burn over residential land) took all our attention as
more people were evacuated, more hectares were burned, and more houses
and businesses were destroyed than ever before. If fire didn’t touch
us, it touched someone we knew.

Ross Freake and Don Plant tell the story of two of the interface
fires—the McClure-Barriere fire and the Okanagan Mountain Park
fire—through the words of the firefighters, the community workers, the
volunteers, and all the people caught up in the struggle. It is a
powerful story, full of emotion and bravery, skilled activity and
difficult choices, with a little poor judgment and good luck thrown into
the mix.

The personal stories are one of the great strengths of the book. The
care that people extended—even to strangers—is moving. Conflicting
accounts are left unresolved. The atmosphere of confusion and shock at
the pace of the action and the failure of the systems on which everyone
relies is deeply embedded in the stories. Communication is both
difficult and critical. Three explicit questions are posed and partially
answered by the authors: How do rural and urban communities differ? What
role should the media play? What have we learned from this experience
that will help us to better cope with the next one?

The layout is inviting with a brief introduction and a black-and-white
photo for each storyteller. Sometimes the story weaves from narrator to
narrator, from professional to resident to media. Several maps introduce
the story, giving the reader a spatial overview. Two appendixes and an
index of contributors offer further information.

This balanced yet evocative account of people facing up to one of the
more terrifying experiences in life reminds us that in an emergency we
all matter.