The Mount Underwood wildfire southwest of Port Alberni, B.C., on Monday. A transmission line into the town of Bamfield was blown Monday night by the wildfire.Supplied/The Canadian Press
The 300 or so year-round residents of Bamfield, B.C., are no strangers to power outages, often forced to go a day or so in the winter without electricity in their craggy hamlet on southwestern Vancouver Island.
But, on Thursday, many locals were on edge during their third day without power, as they sought out gas for generators to keep upward of a thousand tourists comfortable and hundreds of kilograms of salmon they had just caught from rotting.
Fuel shortages fluctuate, but any new ice was nearly all gone Thursday, said Kevin McAughtrie, co-owner of Bamfield Mercantile and Marine store. He said tourists who are there are now cutting their fishing trips short and that many with trips planned are avoiding taking the one logging road into town – all as peak angling season arrives.
“Right now, it’s just full-blown hour-to-hour survival to figure out what we need to do to get through the next few days,” Mr. McAughtrie said in a phone interview, before he began another trip ferrying tourists out of the community on his boat.
The transmission line into town was blown Monday night when the Mount Underwood wildfire ignited south of Port Alberni. The blaze has grown so massive that BC Hydro has been unable to enter the area and assess the amount of damage.
The wildfire was reported at about 6:30 p.m., and it had grown to span 600 hectares by the end of that day, the BC Wildfire Service has said.
Karley Desrosiers, an information officer with the service, said there was “aggressive” growth on the fire within a couple hours of its discovery on Monday.
“That was quite significant and very unusual for not only Vancouver Island … but even elsewhere in the province, that would be considered quite significant.”
By Wednesday, the fire had grown to span more than 20 square kilometres, located about 12 kilometres south of Port Alberni on the east side of the Alberni Inlet.
Ms. Desrosiers said the blaze was not threatening the communities of Port Alberni, Bamfield or Youbou on Wednesday.
Bamfield is a frequent stop for people hiking the 75-kilometre West Coast Trail, which has an entry or exit point at Pachena Bay, about 5.5 kilometres away.
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A statement from Parks Canada on Wednesday said the fire wasn’t affecting the trail and it remained open, although communities that support hikers have asked visitors to delay all non-essential travel until the situation stabilizes.
The agency said it was not taking new reservations for the trail or Keeha Beach and that hikers could be asked to leave the trail at Nitinaht Narrows, about the midway point of the hike, where they would be taken by bus to retrieve their vehicles.
Orest Iwaszko, captain and owner of Alberni Charters, was bringing his trawler up the Alberni Inlet on Tuesday when he saw the inferno engulfing a ridge above.
Normally, in peak fishing season, there would have been a hundred or more boats plying the fjord that cuts into southwestern Vancouver Island for chinook and coho salmon, but on Tuesday, he saw only two or three.
When he docked at Port Alberni that evening, the sky was darkened by thick smoke. On Wednesday afternoon, he said the air remained intolerable.
“I’m at home, but as soon as you open the door, it’s like standing beside a campfire with smoke blowing in your face,” he said Wednesday.
Mr. Iwaszko is on shore because his group of clients from Calgary and the United States cancelled their three-day tour to the nearby Broken Islands owing to the wildfire.
With rain and higher humidity in the forecast, Ms. Desrosiers said the blaze was less likely to show crown fire unless winds pick up substantially.
She attributed the unusually severe fire behaviour to a drought that has gripped Vancouver Island this spring and summer.
“With that absence of rain since May, that has certainly resulted in the aggressive fire behaviour,” she said, adding that strong winds were also a factor on Monday.
Looking ahead, Ms. Desrosiers said there is some rain in the forecast but that crews won’t be counting on it to bring the fire under control.
With a report from The Canadian Press