ROTHENBURGER: Community expertise needs to be brought into wildfire fight
Scene along highway after reopening. (Image: Kent Simmonds, CFJC Today)
HEROES OR FOOLS? Those who refuse to evacuate and who instead stay behind to defend their homes against wildfires are one or the other depending on your point of view.
It needn’t be that way.
The confrontation between 20 or so people and police at a Shuswap checkpoint this week was the culmination of discontent that had been brewing for days in the resort area.
While it’s not uncommon for a percentage of property owners to defy orders to evacuate in the face of advancing wildfires, the roadblock incident was a first. Dubbed the “Truth and Freedom” convoy, it was called together with the apparent objective of getting through a Highway 1 police checkpoint to deliver food and supplies inside an evacuation zone.
It’s more than a little sad that the Shuswap tragedy should be hijacked for another “freedom” protest against imagined attempts by government to control the populace.
Police weren’t amused by it, and neither were a lot of Shuswap residents. BC Wildfire Service definitely wasn’t, either.
Mel Rothenburger is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award. He has served as mayor of Kamloops, school board chair and TNRD director, and is a retired daily newspaper editor. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.
ArmchairMayor.ca 
Maybe it’s time the province or regional district started funding volunteer fire brigades in forested areas like East Paul Lake and Pinantan. They have trained personnel and equipment already (funded through donations) and could do so much more if funded properly by government. We need all the help on the ground we can get these days.
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I couldn’t agree more and fought a losing battle on that one when I was on the TNRD board.
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Yes, you did give it your best shot. Maybe the powers-that-be will be more receptive now. One can hope, anyway.
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With all due respect I strongly suggest you both use the search phrase: “rewilding project agenda 21 British Columbia”. I’ve been watching this slow motion train wreck for 20 years. It’s difficult to believe anything so patently evil is being actively marketed at a “ social good”, but seeing is believing.
I wish I could dismiss this as paranoid delusion, or temporary madness, but in the past I invested many hundreds of hours over two decades and it is as real as cancer and just as metastatic.
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