B.C. Wildfire Sitch: Firefighters Almost Got Cooked?! 🔥🚒

Spilling the Tea

Aight, fam, listen up. Last year, during the Lower East Adams Lake wildfire, the BC Wildfire Service (BCWS) had this "genius" idea to do a planned burn on August 17th. Sounds smart, right? Wrong. WorkSafeBC dropped a whole report saying the planning was straight-up sketch.

Apparently, they didn't have enough info, no safe spots, no escape routes, and no one keeping watch for the ground crews. Like, hello? Firefighters almost got Thanos snapped! Some crews even got trapped, and their trucks took a hit. It was a whole mess. One crew of Brazilian firefighters couldn't get to their escape route and had to hide, while others had issues dodging burning debris.

And the drama doesn't stop there. They waited ELEVEN DAYS to report the whole sitch to WorkSafeBC. Immediate violation, obvi. WorkSafeBC even pointed out that BCWS's own analysis said there was "no consideration towards ground resource co-ordination." Plus, their rulebook says they needed an Ignition Specialist, but apparently, that memo didn't get delivered.

To make things even spicier, residents were already side-eyeing the planned burn, and then evacuation orders dropped for the North Shuswap communities. People were not vibing with it, saying it made the fire worse. Now they're demanding answers from the government, like, "WTF happened?!"

WorkSafeBC is basically telling BCWS to get their act together, make sure their planning is on point, and actually keep their workers safe. Big yikes all around.