Evacuation, Second Day

    On the first day after we were evacuated, we woke up comfortably at our friends, the Milnes’ house, who had generously offered to host us during our evacuation.   We were of course, very curious about where the “Teare Fire” had traveled overnight, and whether our house had been impacted or destroyed by the fire.   At midmorning, we  drove into McBride to see what we could learn.

    It soon became clear that the fury of the fire, which we had seen the day before, had pretty much vanished.  There were a few small scattered plumes of smoke visible, but for the most part, all that was left of the fire was a large, bare, gray swath of ash, where the fire had traveled across McBride Peak.  We could see that our house was safe, because the fire, though traveling in a NW direction toward our house, had angled upslope on the mountain instead of traveling low across the mountain’s base which is where our house is located.

    In town, we were surprised to learn that, even though everyone on our road had been evacuated, there were no restrictions preventing evacuees from going back to their houses to get additional things, but they are not allowed to return permanently yet, so we did drive back to our house to pick up some things we had forgotten.

    The weather had cooled quite a bit from the previous day and the wind had changed direction making the fire more active on it’s east flank, traveling away from us.

    We were much relieved at seeing that our house and all of the other homes on our road had been spared.  As far as I know, no houses were burned, but I heard that the old log lookout hut, halfway up McBride Peak, had been destroyed. 

    Luckily most of the lower slope of the mountain is treed with Aspen, instead of conifers.   Aspens don’t really burn very well, creating a bit of a barrier from forest fires.   Below is a photo of smoke from the fire that was still burning yesterday, along our road across from Koeneman Park.  You can see that although there is smoke, the Aspens themselves, are not burning, the fire was just burning slowly on the ground.     

    Last night we got a good rain and the weather has again cooled, so hopefully that will spell the beginning of the end of the Teare Fire.

You can see my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca