As they fled, Lytton residents watched their community burn

Edith Loring-Kuhanga was in a Zoom meeting at home when she heard sirens whizz past her house on Fraser Street in Lytton, B.C.

Shortly after, she got a call from a colleague telling her she needed to get out of her home — immediately. 

Her suitcase was already packed because she was supposed to be going to Victoria the following day. She grabbed that and her computer, and left. 

“It just happened so fast,” she told CBC Radio. 

“People didn’t have time to get their animals, people just didn’t have time to get their personal belongings. I mean, I left all my photo albums. I left everything behind.”

More than 1,000 people were forced to leave their homes on Wednesday evening as a wildfire tore through the community following three days of nationwide record-breaking temperatures in the small B.C. village.

Hear from people who had to evacuate the village of Lytton, B.C., when a fast-moving wildfire swept through the community Wednesday. 1:31

Ely Makeiv didn’t even have a shirt on when he was forced to evacuate. 

“I just grabbed my dogs and I just barely made it out,” he said.

He had to stop twice on his way out of town because the thick smoke blanketing the roads made it impossible for him to see where he was going. Eventually, he made it out.

Bernice Abbott, who had been out of town, returned to Lytton on Wednesday to see her community engulfed in flames and smoke.

She had 15 minutes to go into her home to retrieve essential items. 

The devastation of Lytton is seen from the air on July 1. (Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press)

“I immediately went and got all our IDs,” she said.  

“The kids just got back from being at a relative’s house, so they had their bags packed already, so it was a matter of just my partner and I getting our bags and going.”

A building in Lytton is engulfed in flames on June 30. (2 Rivers Remix Society)

As Nannette Phillips-Smith left her job at the local bank on Wednesday evening around 5:15 p.m., she noticed the fire up behind a motel. It was then she knew she had to get out of the area. 

“I could see it. I could smell it,” she said. 

She left for Lillooet, not knowing where her family was, as there was no cell reception or Internet. 

She left behind her hometown, the place where she grew up, knowing her home would likely be gone when she returned. 

Evacuation centres

Lillooet, north of Lytton, took in dozens of evacuees through the evening. A district representative said Thursday they had an official count of 188 people, but the number was likely higher as many evacuees had not formally registered.

Loring-Kuhanga, Abbott and Phillips-Smith all made it there safe, but scared. 

“Anxiety is high,” Abbott said Wednesday night. “We’re still trying to get a hold, get into contact with family and friends.” 

The hottest place in the country, Lytton, B.C., became an inferno on Wednesday as fire tore through the town and drove all the residents out. (2 Rivers Remix Society/Vimeo) 2:47

Phillips-Smith didn’t hear from her family until Thursday morning, as they finally made it into town after driving from the west side of Lytton to Lillooet. 

Some people continued on past Lillooet, to the community of Boston Bar, an evacuation centre in Merritt or to Kamloops. 

“I was scared,” Phillips-Smith said. “I didn’t know what to do. I was just worried about my family.”

Hundreds of people fled their homes at a moment’s notice Wednesday after a fast-moving wildfire tore through the community of Lytton in B.C.’s Fraser Canyon. (Facebook/Edith Loring Kuhanga)

Loring-Kuhanga said some people were worried about the Mckay Creek fire burning 23 kilometres north of Lillooet. As of Thursday afternoon, that fire had grown to 150 square kilometres, and remains out of control. 

“People are a bit scared of that, too, because they’re saying, you know, we just came from a fire and we’re now driving back into another fire,” Loring-Kuhanga said. 

“If that fire continues to come toward Lillooet, then are we going to be really stuck? So I think a lot of our community members are thinking, you know, should we just go now and head to Kamloops and try to find a place there.”

‘Most homes’ destroyed

The province said  “most homes” and structures in the village, as well as the local ambulance station and RCMP detachment, were destroyed by the fire. A local member of parliament said 90 per cent of the village is gone.

Video captured by a Lytton resident fleeing the community on June 30 shows several structures on fire. (2 Rivers Remix Society/Vimeo)

As she described the devastation in her community to CBC’s Gloria Macarenko, Loring-Kuhanga broke down into tears. As she did, one of her students from the school she worked at in Lytton, who was also at the Lillooet evacuation centre, came over to tell her it would all be OK. 

She said she wishes people had had more time to grab the things that were important to them.

“I just think of all our community members,” she said. 

“So many of the people who have so many memories and history and generations of living in their homes and everything — and now it’s all gone, you know, and I think that’s what’s so, so painful for people, is that a lot of them didn’t have time.”