Lost homes and screaming horses: How survivors of a Canadian inferno are greeting a raging new wildfire season

VANCOUVER—At night, the cries of the horses left behind are what disturbs Joe Dunstan’s sleep.

It has been almost two years since fire ripped through his ranch near Lytton, B.C., where he ran a trail-riding business.

Dunstan tried hard to save all his horses as the flames charged in, but the heat was so intense he couldn’t breathe. He suffered burns on his arms and face during the attempt.

Though the blaze arrived suddenly and didn’t last long, he’s still coming to realize how much he was affected mentally by the blaze that swept through the area and is best known for destroying the village of Lytton.

“The fire took more than people understand,” Dunstan said of the psychological pain.

“I watched my house melt in front of me and I ran,” he said. “Dreams. You might call them nightmares. The screams of my horses that didn’t make it.”

Now, as another wildfire season starts, those who witnessed first hand the destruction an inferno can bring can’t help but be on edge.

In June 2021, an atmospheric heat dome brought soaring temperatures to B.C., killing hundreds in the province and making the landscape tinder dry.

Lytton, about a three-hour drive northeast of Vancouver, broke records for days before finally reaching 49.6 C, the hottest temperature recorded in Canada.

Then the wildfire came. Within hours, most of Lytton was burned away and two residents had died. (The fire contributed to the death of Dunstan’s brother, who had health issues exacerbated by the constant moving around in the months afterward.)

Dunstan has since been living with friends in Merritt, a small city a couple of hours away. This summer he is planning to finally be able to move back to what’s left of his home.

But smoke billowing from the B.C.’s northeast, where wildfires are raging, is hard for Lytton residents to ignore; it’s not the proximity, it’s the symbolism. The village, in an area known as Kumsheen by the local Nlaka’pamux people, is more than 1,000 kilometres away from the flames up north but the phenomenon still signals a stressful annual period.

Village Coun. Nonie McCann said some will confide they are “triggered” when wildfire season begins, even by routine smaller blazes that pop up near the village.

“There’s always the early spring fires in April, cause someone’s burning grass and it gets away cause it’s really dry,” McCann said. “That kind of gets everybody tuned up.”

Still, though such events can make locals anxious, McCann said she’s more struck by the resolve of those who managed to remain in the area though few streets still have homes that survived. They tend to accept the season is coming and make extra effort to ensure their homes have fire-prevention measures in place, she said.

“It’s getting to be that time. Starting to think about the go-bags and the things you have to have ready, ’cause it’s that time of year.”

Those who lost their homes still await the village’s rebuilding, McCann said, but some have simply called it quits — the town’s pre-fire population of 250 is quietly shrinking.

“We’re slowly watching people give up and move on because it’s just taking too long,” McCann said. “They just don’t have the energy to deal with it.”

She said the village council is still working to plan rebuilding efforts, but resources have been stretched, despite a financial pledge from the federal and provincial governments. Part of the delay is due to archeological efforts in the area searching for Indigenous artifacts or burial sites.

Meanwhile, many who stay face long commutes to work, or just to complete basic errands, out of town. There is a small grocery store and some other services nearby but social life is lacking, McCann said.

“That’s the one thing that’s really missing right now,” she said. “There is no restaurant, there is no café, there is nowhere to go for a cup of coffee to sit down with your friends.”

In recent months, the isolation has improved a little, McCann said, as local organizations have arranged various get-togethers for residents. Many came to realize the solitude wasn’t good for locals’ mental health, she said.

But the town is still static. Even the past has had to wait.

Lorna Fandrich is the executive director of the Lytton Chinese History Museum, a private endeavour highlighting the history of Chinese people in the area and province. The 2021 fire levelled it; out of 1,600 pieces about 200 survived and only about 40 are good enough to go back on display, she said.

Between archeological and chemical reports required after the fire, the building’s recovery has been slow going. But Fandrich said reconstructing the museum will “hopefully” start in August, thanks to donations of both funds and artifacts — people across B.C. have provided about 500 items.

“They weren’t specific to Lytton but they were specific to that time,” she said. “If you go to any old railway camp you’ll find the very same kind of pottery sherds, you’ll find the same kind of bottles.”

Those items can still tell the story, she said, and the aim is to have the museum open next April. She said those now making plans seem optimistic that things will start moving soon but, like many in the village, Frandrich said she recognizes nothing is certain.

“I think everyone in Lytton fluctuates from a small hope that things are getting better, to dismay that they’re not, to ‘OK, we’ll just give up and wait and see what happens,’” she said. “I think people are like that about their homes” — definitely, she adds, the business community are.

Today, according to McCann, plots of land that once hosted houses now look like gravel pits, and former Lytton residents who decided to leave are scattered “all over.” Some may come back, some may not. For now, they are gone.

Dunstan is one of them.

For one year after the fire, he lived in evacuation accommodations before finally finding his current temporary residence.

Now, Dunstan said, even though family and his remaining horses are there, the impact of going back to his property this summer is still hard.

There’s nothing left of the ranch, he said — the fire turned it into a desolate patch of land.

But he hopes to change that.

“I’m going to go back and rebuild something,” he said. “I have to.”

Jeremy Nuttall is a Vancouver-based reporter for the Star.