The welcome wagon wasn’t knocking on Alicia Butler’s door.
Not at one o’clock in the morning
Butler — who, along with her partner Dave and their son Hemingway, lost their North Shuswap home in the Bush Creek East wildfire a few weeks ago — was alerted to a fire near their rental home in Scotch Creek in the early hours of Thursday. , September 14. She and her family had moved into the house just less than a week earlier.
“Christy Bullock is my friend, who also lost her home in Celesta, and she came knocking on my door at 1 a.m.,” Butler said. “Her daughter let her cat out and noticed the fire on the hillside. They also rent a house in Scotch Creek.
The fire broke out on the Squilax-Anglemont Road ramp at Butters Road, above the old Scotch Creek Tavern that used to be, and very close to where a new house is being built. A fire broke out in the place on Wednesday morning, and residents helped put it out.
It is believed that winds that blew late Wednesday/early Thursday caused the fire to reignite.
Bullock and Butler both called 911, along with local Scotch Creek firefighters Corey Cyr and Dave Van Oerschot. The two men had stayed in August to fight forest fires.
“They were the first two people on the scene, and about 40 minutes later three fire engines showed up,” Butler said. “Then we started calling friends who we knew had stayed behind.”
The fire was once again extinguished, except for some smoldering smoke that Butler could see at lunchtime Thursday.
“The firefighters were so close to us that we could hear them talking, that’s how close they were,” Butler said. “They had headlights from the trucks and floodlights to help them get out at three in the morning.”
Butler and her family haven’t unpacked their emergency bags since evacuating from their Desidero Road home on Aug. 18, and don’t plan to unpack for a while.
“These (spot fires) will continue for a while,” she said. “It’s going to be a turbulent couple of nights. Helicopters were flying in the area on Wednesday. There was a fire near where my house once stood.
“You start to wonder if we could catch a break.”
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roger@vernonmorningstar.com
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