Beautiful British Columbia

"The orange colour is often the colour you see from the smoke from fires because the particulate matter in the smoke filters out a lot of the blue light from the sun and you see a red tinge."
"It's like a sunset, but it's overtop of you."
John Paul Cragg, Environment Canada warning preparedness meteorologist

"[I was very concerned, it looked like the apocalypse out there this morning."
"At first I thought the sun had gone out or [was] certainly rising a little later ... then at 7 o'clock it was still dark and I thought, 'We have a problem here'."
John Stanton, marathon organizer, founder, Running Room

British Columbia has declared a state of emergency for a two-week period which may be extended to reflect the situation at any given time. "Public safety is always our first priority and, as wildfire activity is expected to increase, this is a progressive step in our wildfire response to make sure British Columbia has access to any and all resources necessary", explained the province's Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth. "Taking this step will further ensure we can protect the public, property and infrastructure, and assist with firefighting efforts."

No fewer than 500 wildfires are burning. And the smoke that has ensued from those out-of-control wildfires has darkened the atmosphere so severely in some places it is as though day has been turned into night. Air quality is certainly compromised. Even neighbouring Alberta has seen its air reflecting the effect of the wildfires. Thick, black smoke blows where it will with the wind, respecting no provincial boundaries. "Fire tends to be most active between 4 and 7 in the afternoon", because of the tendency for landscapes to dry over the day's hours. explained Marg Drysdale of the B.C. Wildfire Service Northwest Fire Centre..

Resulting in air quality warnings issued for parts of the province, along with Alberta, Saskatchewan and southern Manitoba. Currently, 3,372 firefighters and contractors are responding to the blazes, with 465 of that number from other provinces; Alberta, New Brunswick, Northwest Territories, Quebec, Saskatchewan, Parks Canada as well as Australia, Mexico and New Zealand, volunteering their expertise, energy and in fact, their lives in a communal effort to tame nature's outbursts. The number of fires this year is greater than last year's wildfire season's.

But by this time last year, according to Kevin Skrepnek of the Wildfire Service, hundreds of homes had been lost to wildfires, with tens of thousands of residents displaced as a result. British Columbia is a huge province, rich with mountain ranges, great tracts of forest, desertified areas, lakes and rivers galore (the mighty Fraser and the Thompson), and farmland devoted to apple orchards, ginseng crops, beef ranches. In an area where there was a gold rush, Cache Creek, some 350 kilometres northeast of Vancouver that was evacuated in last year's wildfire season, a group of auto aficionados from the province on a driving adventure encountered an antidote to wildfires.

The group of friends, all owners of vintage British vehicles, convertible Morgans, planned to drive together from West Vancouver to Kamloops, British Columbia. On arrival at their destination, the members of the Pacific Morgan Owners Group planned to enjoy dinner together, and return home the following day. On Saturday, however, by the time they had reached Cache Creek, they came across the threat of a sudden, violent thunderstorm and all hastened to put the tops up on their convertibles.

Tom (driving) and Valerie Morris in their 1969 Morgan Plus 8 at the start of a trip from West Vancouver to Kamloops on Aug. 11, 2018, that ended in tragedy when a mudslide swept the vehicle with Valerie in it off Highway 99 near Cache Creek during a violent thunderstorm. Submitted / PNG

The sky had turned dark, and the rain gushed down. And that downpour sent logs, boulders, mud and water rushing across Highway 99. The couple that was the organizer of the group's outing had stopped on the highway as did the others, to put their convertible top up with the intention of carrying on. Valerie and Tom Morris thought, as did the others who had stopped nearby, that they would ride out the storm and continue on their way. As Tom prepared to get back behind the driver's seat in his carefully restored Morgan the vehicle with his wife sitting in it was inundated with mud, and slid off the road.

"All of a sudden it started to get really cloudy and it started to absolutely pour down and we had never seen anything like it, and we've been through a tornado before", recounted Pat Miles, one of the Morgan group who had been directly behind the Morrises. "Visibility went down to zero and it was like someone was throwing buckets of water against the windshield", Steve Blake, another of the Morgan group further described the weather assault that had overtaken them.

As the others turned around to drive back from where they had come, they had no way of knowing that the mudslide had sent the vehicle of the Morrises with Valerie in it, down a steep embankment beside the highway. Tom, Valerie's husband was saved, though he was cut and bruised over his entire body. His wife was lost, completely inundated by the mud, along with the prized vehicle they took such pride in. Authorities are attempting to recover her body.

Nature plays her tricks as she will; the tumultuous rain event that caused the mudslide would have effectively put out any wildfire it might have encountered, only there was no wildfire where it came down and where the Morgan Group were driving, anticipating a pleasant drive with good company, instead encountering a threat to their lives. Wonderful, wild, and bountiful British Columbia; a nature-lover's dream.