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What would the world be without fire?

The sun, the stars, the moon...

all fire.

Volcanoes... fire.

Fire all around.

Oh... sneaky coyote.

He's like fire, he comes and goes.

You'll see, in the distance, you'll see the smoke...

...suddenly, there's the flames...

...lickin' at your heels.

He's there when you least expect him.

I'm similar, in some ways, to fire.

It can be pretty intense at times.

Rap KILO, it's Rap Base.

I get the phone call, and it's, like,

"Okay, we need to be on our way in 30 minutes."

You don't know much

until you get into the helicopter.

X-ray, runway 3-0.

We're the first ones there.

We can get into these remote,

usually mountainous, steep locations,

because we can just hover right above it,

propel in,

and get right next to the fire.

I'm very hyper focused on what I do,

to the point where you're not really noticing the noise

and the fact that you're hovering

200 feet off the ground.

I don't like heights,

and yet, I rappel from helicopters...

...and that's all credit to training that allows you

to almost forget that you have that fear.

Each type of fire is different.

You'll have a smaller fire that's creeping along,

this more intense fire that's burning out of control.

In my mind, like, I just see a flaming bear.

A big grizzly bear,

just running...

running to survive.

That's what a fire does,

is it needs all the fuel to keep going,

from the forest.

Big bear... just runnin'.

You kinda live on the edge of your seat.

You don't make plans.

Good morning, Rider Ventures. Jackie speaking.

And you need five people?

Probably 14 days.

Everything revolves around fire.

My husband and I own the company Rider Ventures.

He's the dreamer, I'm the realist.

He's the branches on the tree, and I'm the roots.

I'm from Okanagan Indian Band.

Been firefighting pretty much my whole life.

I love fire.

It's dangerous.

It's very powerful.

More powerful than what people think.

It, at times, can be a beast.

It could be the dancing devil or dancing warrior.

It could be your worst enemy.

But it's the respect that you have to have

of what that beast is capable to do.

If you don't have the respect for that,

it'll beat you.

It's so beautiful,

yet so destructive...

how it can just be so many different colours,

and it... just how it dances with itself,

or it dances with the wind,

and how it carries itself so gracefully across.

I can find myself just looking in awe

and just staring into it.

The climate crisis

is not a fiction.

It is absolutely real,

and if you look... I've had a briefing

from the Wildfire Service yesterday,

and again today,

the entire West Coast of North America,

from Baja to Alaska, is red-hot.

It is a global challenge,

and we all need to have citizens of the world

coming together.

I always looked up to firefighters.

I thought, like, they had the coolest job.

Rider Ventures actually came out to my small hometown,

and they were offering training to be a wildfire firefighter,

so I jumped on that opportunity.

We have a two-hour period

to have everything ready to be on base

and have everything in the trucks

and getting ready to go out.

I cover my bases with all of my loved ones,

just making sure I say everything I need to say.

Not like I'm worried about the worst,

but...

things happen in a blink of an eye.

My mom's a worrier,

so she does not watch the news during fire season.

My name is Yiwitkam,

which means the sounds of the water and the rapids...

making its way through the small rapids.

My English name's Tiffany.

I live in God's country...

...in the Naswhito Creek area of Vernon,

on the Okanagan Indian Band Reserve.

I have three children.

My Okanagan name is Supí,

and my English name is Kara.

I like spending time with animals.

Come on.

We all thought the fire wasn't gonna come so close...

...but we still had, like, our cows on the range,

so I was really worried about them.

Your FFCs are 90.2.

Rate of spread is eight metres per minute...

...so fire could spread pretty fast for you guys.

Hazards down there,

what we wanna be paying attention to are...

wildlife...

danger trees, right?

What kind of machinery's on-site?

Uh, they got some helicopters, 212s,

and also there was air tankers on there,

plus we got some dozers too. Okay?

It's the winds down there, guys,

that we also wanna pay attention to, the southwest winds.

Let's head out and get your trucks packed.

We need that.

Will you back the truck up properly, please?

- Absolutely! - Okay.

Once you get around your crew,

that's when you calm down,

and when you get your crew,

once you get your orders, that's when, like,

"Okay, like, it's time to get down to business,"

and, yeah, you can mentally prepare

for what the work's gonna look like,

relying on your crew to keep you grounded.

You got everything you want, Vern?

Watch the chatter on the radio, and...

let's do this.

You have to be accountable for each other.

If something happens to me,

I know that this person has my back.

We are each other's lifelines.

There was a time

where there was a tree burning through the centre

that no one saw,

and I was looking down at my crew lead,

who was falling another danger tree.

And behind me, my coworker yelled my name.

I looked up at the tree,

and the tree was falling towards me.

I just dove into the black.

We were always watching the fire,

keeping an eye on it.

Oh...

yum.

I've lived in Monte Lake on and off

for the last, probably, like, ten or so years,

'cause the house was paid off, we were...

we were just enjoying ourselves,

where we didn't have to stress

and get up, get ready, and go to work,

get up, get ready, and go to work.

Yeah, I was enjoying that,

just in the morning or something,

doing a little beading.

I always pop down to the food truck and say hi

to Kate and Brian, who... I've known Kate for many years.

Have coffee down there,

and then, we talked about it.

"What do you think?

Do you think we have a need to worry?"

I was, like, "Okay,"

Talking to Robert,

"What's our backup plan?"

And he was like, "There's no...

We're gonna stay and fight!

It's not gonna happen.

If anything... look what we got. We're gonna... we can fight it."

We had a gas water pump ready to go.

We had a tanker in the back of the truck.

We have our creek down below,

and we had another cistern up top, to use.

It felt like we lived with that fire

for months.

The air quality in British Columbia was so poor,

and the evacuation orders were stretching on.

We were on alert for a long time.

I was down at the lake,

and it was kinda the first time

I'd seen the fire crest the hill,

and I remember thinking,

"They look small,

and they look farther away than I thought."

But, of course, that was just the first glimpse,

and what I didn't see was behind that ridge.

And I remember thinking,

"I think we're gonna be okay.

I feel like we'll make it through."

I was feeling so calm that I was, like,

"I'm gonna take a spin by the school."

Like, "Everything feels like it's okay."

There were fire crews from all over.

The Chief of Operations said, "We have weather coming in.

Make sure you're ready."

And then, when the wind kicked up,

I just remember thinking, "Oh, here we go."

I woke up, and I looked,

and I couldn't see anything. The ruddy smoke was so thick.

I never actually really thought

the fire was gonna come.

A lot of our people out here wanted to stay...

...especially the older people, like my papa.

I didn't want to go.

I thought I could stay here and fight the fire,

save my house.

I was really scared,

'cause besides my kids,

he's, like, the only thing that I have.

I've kinda taken on the role of being here for him

since my granny passed away.

I was crying, begging him to leave.

Told him to quit being stubborn,

and told him that the house isn't as important as he was.

He told us all to go.

He got mad at probably all of us.

The White Rock Lake fire

was aimed right at us.

You could just tell the burn patterns,

where it's going.

Being an ex-camera guy,

I videotape everything.

We kicked it up a notch,

and got better sprinklers, and then just got prepared.

We tried to fill up our pools.

Our closest neighbour is four kilometres away from us.

We're way far out from everybody else.

The way that it ripped through this valley...

this fire is like a ten-headed snake.

When the fire started coming through,

it took out the power lines.

Two different neighbours said, you know, "Get out."

It's very bad here.

Officials are calling it "horrifying and heartbreaking"

Thousands of people

have been forced to flee their homes.

In fact, early this morning,

another 600 property owners in the Okanagan

were told to go home, to get their belongings,

and that they have until 1:00 this afternoon to get out.

We got evacuated,

and we were packing up as many family pictures,

and my grandma's ashes.

I told probably almost all my family

to call my grandpa,

'cause I couldn't talk him into leaving.

And then, finally, somebody talked him into it.

My car was already packed,

because I learned that that's really important,

to just have everything ready.

So I began catching animals

and checking in with neighbours

to see when they were leaving,

or if they were leaving,

and I just kinda sat on my porch,

and took a breath, and said,

"I think I just need to go."

Midnight, there was banging on the door.

"What?"

"Evacuation order. Are you leaving now?"

And I said, "Well, no, not right at this moment."

She told me,

"Well, make sure your family

knows where your dental records are

and who your dentist is

so they can identify your remains."

I remember at some point,

hearing probably one of the fire trucks

go into the trailer park beside us.

"Everybody needs to leave now!" Woop, woop!

The wind is like

the mastermind behind the fire.

It controls everything...

and it could just take the fire, and it just runs...

so you could be fighting it from one end,

and all of a sudden, in a snap of your fingers...

the wind could change,

and now it's running in the complete opposite direction

it was going in.

It's scary.

You look hell in the face some days.

You see some things that would scar most people.

I take five to ten minutes

just to watch what the fire wants to do.

I do that quite a bit, is I study fire.

It's just taught me over the years,

you have to be very patient.

You can't be frustrated about it,

because then it'll beat you up and spit you out.

Topography and fuel,

those are the things

that we really pay attention to and watch.

When we are working on a fire,

we have to have our escape routes.

Go into a safe zone

that's able to protect us from the fire.

If we pay attention to all these elements,

then we're being able to come home safe.

Last thing we want

is to make that phone call to a parent.

Nobody wants that call.

Trees... they regrow, they replace.

Lives don't, right?

Our job is to go out there and put out the fire,

but not at the risk to ourselves,

and there's times

when we just don't actually have to fight

certain parts of the fire,

because it's too unsafe to do so.

"There's nothing that we can do. Let's just step back from this."

Which is hard for firefighters,

but they learn to accept that...

and so there's that element of surrender.

All those firefighters that were here for weeks,

they all evacuated.

Can't blame 'em for that,

'cause it's a Rank-6 fire,

and no one's gonna get in front of that.

There's just flames everywhere.

Most of us evacuated.

There was, I think,

three people that stayed behind in their homes

to fight the fire,

and everyone else basically left.

The flames that were, uh, candling in those trees,

I mean, they-they were massive.

I mean, we were pretty far away,

I've got a pretty good zoom on my camera,

and you could still feel the heat.

Just radiant heat coming at ya.

Incandescent.

Fire is a living, breathing animal.

It breathes, it spreads, consumes...

it's almost alive.

It was a rumbling coming towards us.

That's not a train.

Wind, smoke, heat,

and I was grabbing, like, the cats

and whatever I could.

I couldn't see,

'cause everything's blowing.

And then, both me and Robert are in the car,

and we didn't even have to say anything.

Mentally, we were like, "That's it, we're out."

It was just all red.

It kinda seemed like the whole reserve was gone.

I'd call it a pig.

It devours everything.

It's like a huge roar,

a lion roaring,

or-or some... somebody, like, screaming,

or an animal, and the spit, just raw.

And it was just... ..."Wow."

She was like a hellfire,

just coming through,

and just taking out everything.

Everything went.

All my tools and everything.

I had a turtle collection

my granny started for me

when I was, like, a little girl.

That got left.

I had a collection of beaded medallions,

and I lost all those.

My car.

Saddles...

I didn't even have a pair of riding boots.

The one thing we left behind

that I really wish we didn't

were my cows.

We lost about 15 cows.

All I could think about

was how scary it would have been for them.

I'd been collecting, uh, pine pollen.

I love being out in the trees, and I could just...

you collect all the pollen, and it's just beautiful.

I actually had it all bottled.

Fire came, and it took the whole house.

There's not many trees around here left.

I would like to speak

directly to those who think

they know more than the experts.

Last night,

firefighters with the BC Wildfire Service

once again

put their lives on the line

to help evacuate people

who chose to ignore evacuation orders.

This is completely unacceptable.

No property is worth risking lives.

We got in trouble from Farnworth,

who said we're idiots for coming back in,

but we had no choice.

Now, this is neighbours helping neighbours.

We've put out fires, you know, around us before.

We thought we'd just see how far we could make it,

and I'm glad we tried.

We just put a thousand litres on it.

Looking better.

Put a bit of dish soap in it to make it foam up

and stay a little longer and stick to things.

It seems like it's working.

Probably saved about eight houses from burning.

People go, "Why do you live in a fire zone?"

The whole province is basically a fire zone.

If you're living in a rural place,

don't count on anyone coming.

You know, get prepared before it comes.

Hi.

Come on, come here.

You want some food?

No? You don't like food? Come on.

It was, like, three or four days

after the house was gone

that we could come out.

Everything was gone.

The entire house was burnt down,

nothing left

but the ash and what remained of it.

We found a couple little trinkets...

and I found all my beaded medallions

all melted together.

I didn't cry, though.

I di... I didn't... I didn't cry.

I grew up with my grandfather,

who always had a "cowboy up" attitude.

When we went out there that day,

I knew I needed to be strong for my family.

Kayden cried.

Not just a cry, but he howled-cried...

...because of the devastation of the forest.

He couldn't believe that it was all gone.

Sad for people.

Sad for the Earth.

Sad for his papa,

'cause his papa's house was gone.

All the trees were black...

...and the ground was also burnt.

Pretty tough to come home

and find everything you've worked for all your life

gone up in smoke,

and there was no bringing it back.

We had no insurance, nothing.

From the very first moment

that you're evacuated,

there's a period of just not knowing

if your house is still standing.

And then it started to change

as you figured out, yeah, your house is okay.

It was hard to hear people say,

"You have no idea how lucky you are."

"You have no idea how close you came."

There's something about survivor's guilt,

and I haven't...

ever... talked about it,

because I don't feel I have a place to talk about it.

I don't think I gave myself permission

to really process how I feel different.

This summer,

when the White Rock Lake Wildfire

burned into the Okanagan Indian Band's main reserve,

Dora Alexis, then all the other residents,

were forced to evacuate.

Each spring, the Syilx elder

has been conducting planned burns

to clear out debris

and prevent raging wildfires

on her family's property.

Hey, guys, where are you?

I come home, and I was glad to see

that our place was still standing.

Felt very thankful and grateful

that it was still there.

When you hear about other places being burnt out,

that was one scary, scary thing.

How could it burn so many homes?

But then, you have to know

that the place wasn't previously taken care of

and burnt down.

Well, they're doing pretty good, them.

Quite busy.

Now it's about what is next.

As a teacher,

I had to care for the needs of my students,

and we had a number of people that were homeless,

and parents that were devastated.

I couldn't be there and put out spot fires,

I don't have that skill,

but I knew that I could take care of their kids

so that they could start cleaning up

and start assessing damages,

and I knew that I could take care of our community

in that way...

...and just try to be a force for compassion and care,

and lift everything, as much as I could,

off of the kids...

And just deal with the added stresses...

people living in temporary houses,

and the stress at home.

Trauma, PTSD.

The thread throughout

the entire social studies curriculum

is "connection to community,"

and any time we were exploring any of that,

it was just... flames.

"What do you think of your community right now?"

It's, "Fire. Fire. Fire."

I took pictures

of a lot of the keystone buildings around town,

and we've been drawing them and sketching them...

the things that didn't change in the fire,

like the hall, it still looks the same,

and so I would find a picture of that,

and we'd sketch it.

I'm a water person,

and when you're right out in the middle of that water,

it's like being in a cathedral of... fire.

It's all you see.

It burned around the whole lake.

The reflection of the lake has changed colour,

so even the colour of the lake looks different to me.

I had the sense

that many people in the community have,

that they've lost their forest.

They know these hills and these forests

as they do family members.

I remember feeling called to just listen.

Just sit and listen.

And nothing sounded the same.

The wind didn't sound the same.

There was an eeriness to it...

none of the rustling...

because there was no foliage.

As I was walking those first couple of times,

I could hear screaming.

Not people screaming,

but I could hear the landscape.

I could hear the wailing of sounds

and popping trees and boiling sap...

I could hear it, even though it wasn't there.

The forest was hurting.

Once winter came, the sound changed,

and I didn't hear it anymore.

'Cause snow changes sound

and snow changes colour.

More gauzy and more protected

in the world around you...

and that makes me feel very safe.

We didn't have insurance on our place.

We probably couldn't have got insurance.

We were living in a hotel.

Emergency services put it up there.

I kept asking Red Cross,

"Do you have any resources?

Who shall I call to ask the right questions?"

Nothing. Nothing.

The soil's burnt clean.

It's comin' in nice and green.

You see all the holes?

That's showing us

that the wildlife is coming back,

the woodpeckers.

Some of the plants in here

are growing back pretty good.

Some of the old berries and stuff, oh, yeah.

There's a sister berry right there, too.

Thing about stuff like this, too, like fires,

you'll have stuff come back

that hasn't been here for a while, so...

- For years. - For years, right? So...

Definitely, that's what fire does, right?

It brings back all those kind of stuff.

Just, like, seeing how the Earth comes back...

...that's been probably the best out of the fire.

A lot has changed just in this little bit of time.

Definitely see things different.

To not take things for granted.

We're all back on the property now,

which is nice.

Everybody likes it.

The band said that whoever lost a house,

it was gonna get replaced.

They talked about these temporary homes.

We don't like the small spaces,

but we're just all glad to be back together,

and then my papa will be getting a house,

and hopefully soon.

'Cause he's gonna be 82 this year,

and it'd be nice for him to be in a house.

Are you just gonna be home?

Yeah, I'll be around.

We stayed eight months in a hotel.

I'm back home. I'm back on my land,

and the house that they're gonna build for me

looks pretty good.

It's a pretty stressful year for a lot of people,

all the fires that happened.

Let's just hope next year isn't as bad.

You guys ready?

Over the years,

we've started to see

the intensity of the fires change.

Right here?

So our training has to constantly change

to be able to adapt to these fires.

- Is there bug spray? - There is bug spray.

What I really love about my job

is taking the years of experience that I've had

and being able to pass that on to our younger generation.

We gotta be ready for the fire line.

Fire season's coming.

We can't be there 24/7 with them,

holding their hands.

They've gotta also blossom on the land, too.

Everybody has a work ethic in their life,

and it's just learning how

to pull that out of each individual.

I think that's my biggest drive now,

being there for them.

I didn't have that so much when I was growing up.

"Hey, I'm struggling with this."

"Okay. Well, let's teach you."

Assess your area that you're working at.

Always assess your site.

What's our hazards here, guys?

- Danger trees? - Danger trees. What else?

Overhead.

They're like our kids.

We're proud of 'em.

We get frustrated with 'em.

We love 'em.

We wanna see them home all the time.

We both feel very strongly

about the people that work for us.

The big joke, they call us "Mom and Dad,"

and that's kinda what we are.

The fire's coming,

obviously, if I was taking this building for real,

that balcony over here would be...

I have a new job.

Maybe you wanna be able to access to that point...

Since I started at Rider Ventures,

I've got a variety of tickets now.

I have my Structure Protection, which was really interesting.

Good.

We're gonna look at this building and say,

"Hey, fire's coming from here.

We need to get a sprinkler up as quick as possible."

I wanted to learn more about structure protection

because our house didn't have it.

If we were told how to fire-smart

our home and our property,

then we probably could have done that,

so that it could get sprinklers put on it.

Then I don't think anybody would have lost their homes.

We need to educate more.

Educating people on

"What can you do to protect your house?"

Our Indigenous ancestors,

they were pretty savvy with fire-smart.

Fire is one of our tools

that our people have always used

since they've been here.

We have ceremonies

before we go out and we light fires.

Fire, used properly, it creates life.

We work with nature

when we do our traditional burns.

We're born with a responsibility

to look after our temulaxw,

our territory, our land,

'cause it keeps us alive.

When the settlers came here,

there was this incredibly flourishing ecosystem,

plants and animals,

and everything was just, you know, absolutely incredible,

but that was a managed landscape they arrived to.

The different pine ecosystems that we have here

are fire-dependent ecosystems.

In fact, some of the seed cones won't even open

unless they are exposed to fire.

For the last seven, ten generations,

our people weren't allowed

to practice our culture of burning.

They don't consider that having a fire is good.

We need to undo that.

Suppressing fires got us to where we are now.

Look at last year.

It was monster-big fires

burning up the territory, the land, all over.

It was pretty unreal,

because of the amount of fuel that was left out there

and not burnt, not managed,

and not looked after.

The whole reserve was getting thick.

Nobody was doing anything.

We began to burn every spring.

You have to work with fire.

Burn the grasses and stuff close to the house.

If the fire comes down, then there's no fuel,

so it just peters out, eh?

It was taught to us by our elders.

We learned from them how to control that fire,

how to work with it.

You only have

a short window in the spring to do this, eh?

Just when the snow goes away,

and a few days after, that grass and stuff dries up.

It acts as a spacing for the forest,

so it don't get too thick.

It is a cultural thing.

They had to know how to protect themselves from fire.

Control burn... just as a little fire.

It's not a big fire,

and it can go and clean up the place

without damaging the trees or even the grass.

A big fire tills the soil.

Okay, we just about got it done.

We all have spirits.

All creation have spirits.

Fire has a spirit like everything else.

And the more you feed it, the more monstrous it gets.

Fire's one of the most destructive disasters

that we can face.

An insatiably hungry beast...

...that can never find enough food to eat.

And without intervention...

...it'll just keep going.

All you have left is ashes.

Nothing was being done here.

No one was responding here.

They felt completely abandoned...

forgotten.

So often, you go into disaster sites,

and the biggest obstacle

is that the people have no more hope left

that they can get out of their post-disaster situation.

We go when we're asked

to come in and help with disaster response.

There is no cost.

There's no way we can handle two Paiges in the same room.

Volunteers come from all different backgrounds.

Welcome to your new home!

They're certainly not all Mennonites.

They're all people

that just want to give their time

to help rebuild.

There you go.

But we get involved in

with the ones that have no insurance,

and those that were horribly underinsured

and didn't get enough back to build a house.

These families lost everything in a fire.

They don't have the means to rebuild on their own.

Our biggest aspect of our work

is to help people restore their hope.

So glad we have sometrees.

They asked us, "Would you like us to build you a house?"

- Oh! - Incredible.

We said, "Yes! Yes, please?"

It was just mind-blowing that somebody would...

...do that.

My name is Yenny Peralta. I'm from Mexico.

I have been here for one year,

and I start to work in this tiki bar.

It was really fun.

The families love to be here, to enjoy the food,

drinks, the music.

A summer of fire

has whipped around the world.

Entire towns have been wiped off the map.

No matter where the flames are burning,

there are common themes.

Scientists are unequivocal

that human-made climate chang is to blame.

The rising temperatures and ensuing drought

will create more extreme fire danger

in the coming decades.

Hi.

Living in the Okanagan,

we're no stranger to fires.

Jeff and I have been holding our breath,

because we knew that most of Canada was on fire.

We run a trail-riding business.

Oh, I know.

Mwah!

Horses are very spiritual creatures.

They are very sensitive to your emotions.

A lot of times, rescue animals...

they need rescuing, but we need rescuing,

and we rescue each other together.

How do we describe this summer?

Winds. Dryness.

We're getting those catastrophic events.

The climate... changed.

The danger became very apparent to everybody.

There's been more fires this year than any other year.

I want to get out there.

It's hard to actually mentally prepare yourself.

My son had a really hard time.

He was crying.

But it's a job that I signed up for.

I just had to talk to him

and tell him that I was gonna be okay.

We know we're on the front lines

of climate change history right now,

facing a fire season

that is one of the most challenging

we've ever experienced.

Our crews and partners are fighting wildfires

that are aggressive,

and in many cases, fast-moving and unpredictable.

Wildfire is part of the ecology...

Mother Nature's way of cleaning up the garden.

Lightning-caused fires are natural.

What's not natural

is destruction of the forest

and all the carbon it's releasing into the air.

There's more extreme fire behaviour.

I think fire's made me a better person.

It's made me who I am today.

The biggest lesson it's taught me

is to be careful,

because there is an element of risk in what I'm doing,

and even for a ground firefighter,

they're putting themselves in harm's way,

and I can fly away,

but I can also get clawed by the angry bear.

I had to carry my chainsaw up the little hill,

and I was dying.

And I was, like, "Screw this, I'm done!

I'm not doing this! I'm going home!"

And no, a couple of my crewmates were, like,

"Tiff, come on! You can do this."

Everyone, like, really helps each other out.

You have to be willing to go all day.

You have to get used to a lot of obstacles.

There's so much that is against you.

You could be walking through areas

that are so smoky, you can't barely even see the ground,

so you have to be able to manage with that smoke

without falling over, or getting lost,

or something, right?

That's why being able to understand fires...

they're kinda like a raging bull.

A firefighter

has been killed in the line of duty.

The firefighter is a woman who died

on the front lines,

while on the job fighting a wildfire.

You have the grief,

the anger, the sadness.

"Why did this happen? How did it happen?"

For the first little while,

they didn't disclose any information or any names.

They were just, like, "This was a fatality."

I had a lot of people messaging me.

My aunt called me at 4:00 in the morning

after she just heard the news.

It just immediately reminded a lot of people

that, like, "Hey, Denise could be out there."

During my entire wildfire career,

I have not heard of a fatality.

She was only 19.

A danger tree came down.

That could have been me.

It hit my mom really hard.

She tried to convince me

to stop being a wildland firefighter.

Today was a very long day.

We got a lot of miles covered.

I was able to talk to Kara, Kayden, and Gramps tonight.

I sure miss them.

I couldn't sleep.

I started having nightmares about fire.

Next morning, I got up, and, of course,

we had trail rides booked for the morning.

I came back from the ride,

and Jeff says, "Crystal, this is serious."

The fire started behind our community

in the early evening,

but it became clear by midday

that the fire was going to threaten town,

and that we had really only that daylight period

to do what we could to get people out of the way.

In just the last hour,

we've gone from about 4,500 homes under evacuation

to about 15,000 homes. Families.

We have tens of thousands more on evacuation alert.

We are declaring a provincial state of emergen.

It was all hands on deck

for every fire department nearby,

and from a long ways away,

to rush here and help us.

We were asking thousands of people

to get out of the way,

and in the case of me and most of my team,

these were our houses that were under threat.

These were our families who were evacuating.

I went in the office

just to catch up on some paperwork.

We've just expanded so much

that we outgrew our little home office.

And I started seeing all the news reports

about the wind picking up.

I remember feeling this panic,

because it was so close to our home.

Should we start packing stuff just to be prepared?

'Cause it's sad to say, we're in the industry,

but we're probably not prepared ourselves,

'cause we think about the office, the crews...

but then, we don't think about us, ourselves, our home.

What we do is rescue animals in wildfires.

We'll take our collars, and we'll go get them.

I'm a volunteer

for the Animal Lifeline Emergency Response Team.

This one's baiting me into a tug-of-war.

You have to be really careful

when you're trying to get them out,

'cause they want to go back to their home,

and they're scared.

I know. I heard you. Here, come with your bud.

Come on, guys. Come on, guys.

It's such gratifying work

to know that you can help somebody

when their life has been thrown into absolute chaos.

Not good.

Just got the goats moved now.

We just got 20 horses out.

I've never been so empty here.

Hey, say goodbye to our house.

That's what it looked like.

God bless you... pilots, fire department.

If you can save our place, that will be truly amazing.

Woo...

I can see the mountains on fire.

Firefighters could work for an entire career

and never see

the amount of fire and destruction

that our firefighters saw.

The wind was blowing strong enough

to pull objects out of your hand.

The smell of fire and burning was around you,

and it was hot, very hot,

like the wind was coming out of your furnace,

and it was the sound of, like, a river rushing.

Just kind of hit all of your senses at the same time.

It was a sense of amazement.

There's also a sense of wonder.

Like, "How could this be happening to us?"

We were saving lives and saving neighbourhoods

one house at a time.

It was like

fighting a hundred years of fire all in one night.

I really feared

that not everybody we'd asked to leave

had listened.

That's the viewpoint from Bear Creek Park.

It's on fire.

This is the orchard.

It's completely engulfed.

That is the upper end of Bear Creek.

If there's any houses left up here,

I'd be amazed.

And our home is right there...

which means it's burning to the ground right now.

I can't believe this is happening.

My husband has put his heart and soul

into this property.

He was standing at our barn

nine minutes before the fire was on the road

that would've blocked him in.

Jeff finally arrived at the emergency centre,

and he said...

"Our house is gone.

Everything is gone. We've lost everything."

Watching everything burn on the hillside,

and just knowing that that was my life...

You're helpless.

There's nothing you can do.

That's my home.

And then the fear of, "How far is this fire gonna go?"

And you're watching your whole city on fire,

and people panicking, and the smoke is so intense.

Nobody felt safe.

It was just completely surreal.

It's that single moment

that alters your life and your path forever.

Fire does have its own life,

its own spirit,

but fire doesn't have the kind of human emotions

that we have.

It's not purposely trying to destroy lives.

It's simply doing its job.

It's just a force that comes through,

ravages and destroys,

and then it's just done.

It has its own power.

It creates its own weather.

It's its own universe.

That first morning,

about 5:00 a.m.,

I'm asking myself,

"How many lives have we lost here?"

I knew it was really, really bad,

but we just didn't know numbers.

Despite my darkest fears, there were no lives lost.

We lost close to a hundred homes.

What remains

is thousands of homes that were saved...

and it's because systems were in place,

and plans were written,

and then we executed them, and people listened.

They got the notice.

They got out of the way.

565.

Crazy.

There's nothing left.

I can't believe.

I'm happy here.

Ooh.

The owners

of the Broken Rail Ranch in West Kelowna

had to flee the fire with their animals last week,

but Pumba the pig was just too stubborn,

and refused to leave.

A helicopter pilot fighting the fire

spotted Pumba from the sky

and air-dropped her granola bars.

Firefighters are now caring for her on the ground,

feeding her apples and giving her water.

Sadly, though, the ranch burned down.

When I first started driving through the forest,

I couldn't breathe.

The intensity of that feeling

was overwhelming,

to the point where I felt like I could pass out with this.

That's our main entrance, right there.

I hung a lucky shoe above the front door.

Apparently it didn't work.

I hung a lucky shoe on the back door.

Yeah.

And I hung a lucky shoe in front of the fireplace.

I don't know, I think there...

maybe there's some luck in this somewhere, you know?

I guess the luck is is that we're standing here.

Yeah.

Everything looks so strange.

You think, "Did we really live in there?"

Christmas, I'm not...

I don't think... I don't know if we'll have a tree.

I don't know if I can...

Oh. Here's an angel.

Oh, yeah! Huh.

I'm gonna keep an eye on this.

- You keep it. - There we go.

Yeah, it's pretty tough to look at this.

We had everything set up here beautifully,

and, uh, it's all burnt now,

so all my stuff is just laying all over the place.

It's all just a mess.

I'm starting all over again at 56,

and I don't want to, but I don't have a choice.

Mother Nature had different plans for us.

These two, over the past six years,

have done...

oh, I don't know, 5,000 rides through here?

5,000 rides, yep.

And now our trail...

our trail is gone.

I think this is the hardest thing,

is seeing our... our forest.

Like, it was so green in here.

All the flowers in the spring,

and when we'd take the Girl Guides out,

and I'd always tell them

there are fairies living in here.

This is hard on you. You wanna look?

Yeah. Yeah, you know.

They've been through a lot together, these two.

The forests are burnt.

Our home is burnt.

Our animals are completely disregulated

and displaced.

We are displaced.

Even surrounded by all this chaos and darkness...

...I still feel like this is home.

And we still have this green... beautiful green patch of grass

where Pumba was, where she survived.

Hello, girl!

How is Little Miss Jedi Pig this morning?

Hi.

And being there, I finally could breathe.

Oh, that's fine. That's good.

But her burns look a lot better,

so she looks like she's healed.

It's been a very long year.

We were at one end of the province to the other.

I was, like, 51 days straight.

Jackie, she was nonstop working in the office, too,

by herself,

dispatching crews.

Crews have worked very hard. Tired.

We're all exhausted.

You just didn't know which way to go, at times.

You were guided by the fire.

There was days where, after working a 12-hour shift...

the fire's gonna activate even more...

...and you would work all night to save communities.

Even though your tank is empty,

you found some ways to just push through it.

First responders

can't be the first line of defense.

We can't be the problem-solvers for climate change.

How do we get ready, as a community?

If we could spend even a tiny fraction

of what was spent putting fire out

preventing the next one...

...that's the kind of thinking that has to happen.

We're gonna burn 11 hectares

up there behind us.

It's been fuel-treated by the Penticton Indian Band.

Uh, so however you want to break into groups,

I think we'll do kind of half BC Wildfire,

half P.I.B. folks, so we can all kind of work together,

all gain some experience.

Fire is not a bad thing on the landscape,

if it's well managed.

Everyone went to full suppression,

North-America wide, and across the world.

It's probably not the best approach.

There's a shift in Canada, U.S., Australia...

putting more prescribed fire back on the landscape

to just help restore that ecosystem,

and also help us manage fire more safely and effectively.

People are listening

and involving our people, Indigenous people,

the Syeelhwh, the Syilx, to go out there

and use some of their knowledge,

working together...

doing what's best for the land.

I would call fire

the... rejuvenator.

Its real role is to rejuvenate the land.

From the ashes of that burnt grass or tree

rises new life.

It's like a Phoenix.

I really like fire.

Seeing the way that it moves...

so I think it's really beautiful.

Beautiful but dangerous.

If you get too close, you get hurt.

Today, we're gonna be going up to SilverStar to burn...

Ever since I started working,

Kara's wanted to come to work with me.

No, she's still here.

When she turned 18, she jumped on.

You two can head out now.

Tim, you guys can head out. Okay?

Find out today how much longer you'll be up there.

Okay?

It's another week.

So I want to start it from, like, the bottom side of the...?

Yeah. Yeah.

But in a bit, right?

So that it kinda pushes...

that way, it'll end up spreading

and burning nice and evenly around the whole pile, right?

Being out on the land...

...taking care of the land...

I love it.

I totally love it.

We just make sure that big fires can't go through again.

I was so angry.

Like, when we first lost our house...

I was angry at everything.

If I can do something

that'll help save somebody else's home,

that's what I want to do.

I'm just not doing this for people.

We're also doing this for habitat...

the deer, the moose, the bears, everything.

Helping nature. Helping people.

Looking after our Creator.

Our world is precious.

I wonder how life would be without fire.

I enjoy life.

I don't know if I would enjoy it without fire.

I wouldn't. I know I wouldn't.

You always feel that there's danger there...

that's true.

We could be as dangerous as fire too, you know?

It's just, I guess, we have to respect it.

Have a great respect for fire.