A security worker walks near a burned down gas station after the Bush Creek wildfire destroyed dozens of homes in multiple rural communities including Scotch Creek, Lee Creek and Celista in the North Shuswap Lake region of British Columbia, on Aug. 23.JESSE WINTER/Reuters
British Columbia has pulled firefighting crews out of the North Shuswap area after a group of protesters confronted RCMP at a highway checkpoint, where the demonstrators argued the Mounties do not have the authority to block people from entering a wildfire evacuation zone.
Forrest Tower, a spokesperson for BC Wildfire Service, on Thursday confirmed the Wednesday evening retreat and attributed it, in part, to the protesters on the Trans-Canada Highway near Sorrento. The crews were reassigned to neighbouring firefighting efforts and have not yet returned. BCWS said the protest, in an area where tension between local residents and fire officials is high, put its teams in danger.
A video of the Shuswap clash, posted on Facebook, shows a small group challenging RCMP officers at a checkpoint, with orange pylons and what appears to be a spike belt separating the two sides.
Jeff Rosner, a Sicamous resident who recorded the incident, said the crowd members attended the checkpoint to seek answers about the fire. They tried to bring supplies such as food and fuel to friends inside the evacuation zone who remained to defend their property, he added.
The protest was reminiscent of those that unfolded during the pandemic, when some people opposed to COVID-19 restrictions and vaccine mandates banded together to challenge politicians and those who enforce the law. Misinformation, a distrust of authority and the belief that individual rights trump all defined the extended pandemic protests – and the themes resurfaced on the video of the Wednesday clash.
Derek Sutherland, the head of protective services at the Columbia Shuswap Regional District, said that while local community members have not always agreed with how fire officials have managed fires in the area, North Shuswap residents told him they reject the group that gathered at the police barricade.
“They are not supportive of this freedom convoy that was coming to the area,” Mr. Sutherland said. Local residents, he said, were not part of the confrontation.
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Mr. Rosner, on the other hand, said everyone in the crowd was from the Shuswap area, including evacuees.
Janis Smith, a Celista resident, said the agitators should leave the community: “I don’t know who they are and what they are trying to accomplish but they are making it worse, so if they could just go home that would be great.”
RCMP, in a statement Thursday, said no one was arrested and that the Mounties do not expect to press any charges: “It appeared that the intentions of those involved were to overwhelm the police road block and gain access to the area.”
Police have increased their presence in the area in response to what they described as “ongoing efforts by some individuals who have undermined BC Wildfire Service fire suppression work through the movement of vital equipment, and have compromised emergency personnel safety through threats of violence.”
The area, RCMP said, is not safe because of the threat from wildfires, as well as damage to power lines and unstable trees and buildings.
Mr. Tower, BCWS’s information officer, said fire officials considered a number of factors, including the protest, before pulling crews out of the North Shuswap area and temporarily reassigning them to other parts of the Bush Creek East and Rossmoore Lake wildfires.
BCWS, on social media Wednesday, said it was aware of an “organized effort to dismantle” an RCMP checkpoint.
“This is the latest of several decisions that have significantly impacted operational activities in the area. At this time, the environment is unsafe for BCWS operations,” the post said, adding it would pull crews out of the North Shuswap area.
“This decision was not made lightly. The safety of people is our primary concern.”
The BCWS posts, which appeared shortly before 10 p.m., were quickly deleted. Mr. Tower said BCWS made the posts based on information from RCMP and other partners. As it was posted, RCMP informed BCWS that the “situation that we were describing was not as serious in the moment,” Mr. Tower said.
BCWS opted to delete, rather than revise, the post “in an effort to not give something steam that didn’t, and doesn’t, deserve to have it,” he said. “We know the power of social media in terms of making something bigger than it might be.”
Mr. Tower said crews were constructing a fireguard near Sorrento prior to leaving the area. BCWS estimated it had about two days worth of work left to do there once crews return, he said. Fire behaviour in the area was not “significant or concerning” Thursday and while ground crews have moved out, Mr. Tower said that helicopters continue to work on the entire Bush Creek East blaze.
With files from Nancy Macdonald
Carrie Tait