hi I’m Jamie Pon a little over 3 years ago now Linton BC was declared the hottest place in Canada one of the hottest places in the world actually there was a brutal Heatwave across the province at the time and for the people in liton that heat turned into an Inferno and what happened that day is still fresh in the minds of so many residents the whole back of this was snapping on fire three big ponderosas top to bottom they’ve been cut down now top to bottom all three on fire and everything every blade of grass was snapping so there was this black monster and Embers coming our way um and what I could see was um uh I could I’m sure I could I’m sure there were buildings on fire with the black smoke um I saw fire running up the sea Linton essentially burned to the ground and even though over $200 million have been promised or poured into the recovery rebuilding has been really slow and people are very frustrated my colleague CBC Vancouver reporter IET Bren has been looking into why that is and how Lon might be a cautionary tale of climate disaster recovery Evette it is so great to have you on the show thanks so much for being here um before we get into what Linton looks like now can you tell me a bit about what the town was like before the fire sure well you know Linton is on that Highway One stretch as you head up toward Prince George and when you drive in you can’t help but notice that it’s kind of outlined by the Fraser River and then defined On The Other Side by Rail lines you know this was uh 200 or so people live here lived here uh it was a tiny place with a couple of hotels and uh a Chinese restaurant and a market they called uh named after the owner of the of the restaurant and even though it was so small it it was sort of a hub because it’s at the Confluence of the Thompson and the Fraser it’s always sort of been the place where people gather you know hundreds of years ago to to get but it’s a service center for something like 2,000 3,000 people that live around in pockets in remote rural Pockets around and Reserve Land all around so Linton is has always been a place of meeting and and really an interesting little town and and it’s quite beautiful too right like the seam and it is stunning it’s like you’re driving into a western set and you can understand why people film stuff there it’s just a totally different climate than than you know even half an hour down the road you start to see tumble weeds and those Sage colors and that light you know that that um almost Northern Light so you just got back from there just tell me what it looks like today uh what do you see when you when you drive into into that Village that you just described well it it’s kind of jarring right because you come around that corner and first off you see this one red and white house and a couple on the other side building up but if you go any further than that it is just empty Lots right I mean this it’s may be seven city blocks by Vancouver or Toronto standards but it it’s just a blank Barren landscape and what really strikes you as soon as you get out of a vehicle is all the marmots it’s uh has no people but it’s populated with marmots and I asked around and people said it’s because the dogs the town dogs are all gone right so the marmots have exploded so it’s it’s kind of surreal there’s nothing there and the people who who are still displaced um tell me more about what that’s been like for them well you know we spoke to uh mayor Denise o’ Conor and she described Len for somebody that’s never been to somewhere this small this is a place where everybody knows everybody else right like it’s when you’re living in a in a town that’s 200 strong and that’s just the little town and then right adjacent you just drive down Main Street and you get into Reserve Land there’s about 8 or 900 uh people on the liten first nation that live there people all know each other so when people were ripped out of their homes fled you know we talked to a couple um that literally had to run uh from their porch we took off and narrow road and trying to go down people going up the hill we met them and I fell into the ditch with my little car oh no but I just kept going and H another rock they ended up many of them displaced in hotels or with family it was pretty pretty um hard being out there in the motels uh and I say it was pretty hard because our community is a collective community and and we’re always in that orientation of sitting with family and when that fire happened we were scattered all over there was people in camel you know for a full year before they even got a chance to come back into trailers the First Nation built about 36 trailers where about 50 people are back on Len for nation land um and a lot of people in the town have never been able to come back I mean uh they’ve uh remained outside of the town with family and and some just aren’t going to come back because you know Linton was also a place where there were a lot of seniors some have passed away they’re gone they will never go home others have decided I don’t want to wait any longer it’s been three years and others have you know the trauma of of having lived there during the fire yeah yeah the the people who are living there in trailers I mean what is their life like you know if so much of the community isn’t isn’t there right yeah and it’s it’s you know it’s been sort of a form of camping I mean there is uh you know a main little store uh in town now uh it’s pretty tiny and then the first nation has built a store for some groceries but it means driving away uh an hour to lilett or Ashcraft for a big grocery run uh it’s pretty limited what’s what’s around you know you’d have to go up to Spen bridge to go to a restaurant you know we took the little short ferry ride across the Fraser at one point which is fascinating you can fit two cars on this Little Ferry and it comes every once in a while and it shuts down for lunch and uh across the Fraser there’s about 100 people living on that Hillside and you got to imagine this is all in a Valley and it’s framed by these uh they’re not mountains but Hills and covered with sage and we met with Ken pite uh he is uh camping in his trailer part of the year and part of the year he surfs he’s a retired shop teacher philosopher Surfer but he’s had this great vantage point right watching across the river as Lon struggles to rebuild and how slow that process has been camping in this little Orchard on a little square of cement that is friend lets him borrow when we’re confronted with disasters situations like that life becomes really real you know there there’s that sense of of of reality and and you know there’s a few things you know I realized my own shortcomings you know um I didn’t have any firefighting equipment I didn’t have any you know experience really and you know not the stamina to be able to do anything so there was a sense of of disappointment in that respect but you know and then it was like time to get out tell me more about this slow pace like I think a lot of people listening right now might be a little shocked to hear how little has gotten down because I remember for one all the politicians who rolled through lit and promising to rebuild right like H how is it possible that we’re here three years on well yeah a lot of promises made right and a lot of um hope floated When the Smoke Clears in liton of course the province will be there to rebuild I made that commitment to the mayor today and I make that commitment to those who are in emergency centers around uh the region today we are here as a federal government as partners for whatever support people need we’re standing with the people of Lon to rebuild and we’re continuing to work with the province to keep all British Colombians safe there was even an ad at one point one company from Calgary came in and made this ad this very uplifting ad to Walking on Sunshine and you see these kids school’s going to reopen and there’s you know seedlings being planted and the community got frustrated with that ad because you know that’s not what the experience has been when you talk to people from the leaders you know the mayor uh the First Nation leaders and just people that are experiencing it a lot of money uh was spent cleaning up debris you know after that fire turned the whole town to Ash 100 buildings into the soil all that had to be hauled away remediated and then there was all sorts of uh environmental Consulting about what to do next um and then because that that landed been Stripped Away that soil of course then that revealed some of the history that’s been obscured underneath and some artifacts began to emerge so that kicked in provincial archaeological rules you know as a as a village we we AB appreciate and um and understand the the historical the Heritage the archaeology resource that’s here in the village um but because it is now an issue there are costs that are put onto the people rebuilding that were never there before and so they they’re quite astronomical costs so you know it’s been a complex situation and people that are sitting on provincial land need permits to rebuild they also then need to find a contractor that can build to the new provincial building standards and those are in high demand there’s been a lot of fires in BC so if they’re getting paid more over in a little shoap they go there or if the money’s coming through faster so a a lot of complex Confluence of events happening to make this a very delayed rebuild look like I I don’t know a lot about you know debris clearing and remed iation and archaeological work but it is it normal that that it would take this long for for that kind of stuff to happen like are people that you’re talking to saying that this is you know par for the course well people that I was talking to say they hope that other small communities look at what happened at liton I think there are some unusual things about Lon its history it is one of the longest inhabited settlements in North America right which makes it quite unique uh but there’s also some stuff going on there that people want questioned for you know for others going forward that have disasters like this I mean the Reserve Land and provincial the provincial rules don’t apply the same to that um many didn’t many people didn’t have insurance so they have to wait on the actions of First Nations leaders who got millions from the federal Ministries to rebuild and and that money took a long time to come through some of that money hasn’t come through um and then the actual people building on provincial land have all this permiting I I spoke to Judith urkhart um who came to Linton in the 1970s she’s an educator taught children her whole life and you know hers was one of the first houses you see rebuilding I think it’ll be like home number two that’ll be finished because of of all of this happening only five homes are near completion and only 15 building permits are approved up to this point right we were fortunate that we didn’t um have any artifacts found on our property because as you can see we we were a Hillside and then that Hillside got filled in with the railway so we’re mostly fil here she’s on a slope and the train right runs right behind her and she decided just not to go for a basement because then she didn’t have to touch the land which was all full of fill anyway where she is so she got her permit approved faster than most um and will be rebuilding and she’s hoping that it you know it offers people a bit of hope that it can happen but she does describe an incredibly frustrating couple of years to try to get that done at a lot of cost I think I was angry for a year because you couldn’t figure it out you couldn’t get the answers and we had to work through all a lot of issues so we learned a lot from working with the municipality from what how does the province work how does the federal government work do we have a sense of how much money has been poured into the community so far yeah Jamie I found this fascinating I spent three weeks trying to get out of the Ministries exactly how much money has been either committed to or flowed through Linton I’ve gotten it up to a total of $239 million and that’s like with the 43 million from The Province um and the rest from different Federal Ministries for housing and and different parts of rebuilding but I really don’t think I’ve tallied all of it um the CB rail also gave a million dollars to help rebuild there’s been money coming from other sources so you’re talking an astronomical amount of money that’s flowed or is going to flow into the community um you know people will tell you it’s not uh it’s not really the lack of money it’s other issues and and you know and a lot of people that are trying to build on provincial land are also frustrated because when they do go to build they’re given these assessments um you know you can’t put that poll into that ground if you touch that ground you have to go through our archaeology company which will monitor or do the archea archaeological work and that will cost you and I’m not kidding you between 2 or 3,000 and $80,000 one man told me he was assessed for his property they have to pay for the archaeological work the owners yes if you have uh yeah if you have you know a property on provincial land so non-reserve land you are handed this assessment uh by a company that’s linked to the tribal Council the nttc and that can be thousands and thousands of dollars and there’s a lot of push back around that as you can imagine the village has been held back and they wanted to blame somebody for the for the delay so you know I think I Fel I sort of sense that they were blaming the First Nations that we had asked for this this Heritage uh assessment and that included archaeology right but it’s it’s a government program as the mayor says people just don’t have you know extra cash in their Bank after losing their home and and sitting in in in a hotel for three years to me personally it’s not about the uh about the money or the or the archaeology that’s happening it’s about who’s paying for it these are I’m so fascinated by the archaeological work just can you tell me a little bit more about what’s been going on uh there and then more about how it’s been playing out in the community what’s happened basically is in the 1850s gold miners built over the in kakapa uh First Nation Village and there were burial grounds under there and we spoke to John Hogan historian for the Litton First Nation well right from the start we knew from some of the early maps that there were buildings that were constructed on burial grounds and so we knew that we were walking on the bones of our answers for the most part um Lon is a story place there was and so the s’s protected under BC’s Heritage conservation act because of the treasures and the artifacts and the history that’s hidden now that you’ve torn that layer of top soil away that was all burned uh a year ago the aew the archaeological company uh linked to the tribal council claimed they found a 7,000 year old spear tip uh and Bowen ma BC’s minister of emergency and management climate change Readiness has said that thousands of artifacts have emerged people would really like to see those and know more about them tell me a little bit more about how the government has responded to to all of this well obviously um you know there’s been a lot of uh money pouring in and a lot of help uh offered in terms of cash um I think that the mayor sort of summed up saying if she were to say anything to another small community facing this they needed more just support just organizational making decisions you know sort of an overarching head to come in and and explain how to deal with such a massive dis I mean you understand they lost their R CMP station their Town Hall all of their corporate records everything was gone right so you’re starting from absolute scratch and you’re a m of like a 200 person Town who’s never faced anything like this before the model of um recovery that our province has is community-led recovery and that might work in a in a community where not absolutely everything had burnt down but I really think you know that a a small community in particular does not have the capacity to make those decisions to to find the answers to information they need um you know in a in a disaster where absolutely everything is destroyed there’s been a lot of sort of promises and and cash flow for emergency housing but not a lot of leadership it just seems like right just to help people navigate uh a process that seems to have so many different moving parts and and layers to it on the money issue I understand that the auditor general is actually investigating uh like basically where all this money went that’s right in May there was an announcement that there is an official investigation going on into how recovery money has been spent through and the lack of transparency around that and we’re expecting a report out of that you’ve talked throughout this conversation about um how what happened in Lon and what’s happening in Lon really represents what could happen to so many smaller communities in Canada in the face of devastating Wildfire fires and other climate disasters and you know what what lessons do they see as they continue to navigate this rebuild I guess the the people who have decided to stay absolutely I mean Ken pite that gentleman I told you about on the other side of the river said that the money went kind of through the town it didn’t end up in the town it went through the town he wanted to see more of it land in town and become and rebuild and become buildings and and he hopes that other communities learn from that I I think already I think there’s you know little municipalities that are making darn sure that um what happened immediately after the the disaster here doesn’t happen when the disaster hits their town I spoke to the L and first uh chief chief Naya Hannah and he talked about how there are predatory companies that come in and you know sort of disaster capitalists that come in and make money off disasters and that you know he’s worked in that industry and he knows how it works but a lot of people are naive to it and they’ll sign up for things they’ll put down cash you know there’s there’s better protections that need to be put in place there’s better streamlining that needs to be put in place for permitting and understanding what’s going to happen when you’re when you’re left in a situation where you’ve only got one option then you’re almost forced to take it so there’s a monopoly right now on rebuilding and Len there was just another fire over there so we can either come and help you for this price or we can go help them do you want our help so you’re stuck going okay well I better take them otherwise I’m going to be delayed and you know Ken ped also said that if the archaeological finds that are happening in Linton are that important he feels the province should step in and pay for them that that shouldn’t be shouldered on individuals that have already lost so much um Evette thank you so much for this this is was an incredibly interesting conversation as I mentioned to you before we started recording something that I didn’t know very much about at all and it’s really quite shocking to to to hear a lot of this so thank you so much for coming on it’s been an absolute pleasure and really nice to meet you Jamie all right that is all for today I’m Jamie Pon thanks so much for listening talk to you tomorrow
Much of the town of Lytton, B.C., burned to the ground on June 30, 2021. Three years on, it’s still not rebuilt. Why?
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