Organizers touted it as the hottest festival of the summer, but attendees of the Under the Stars music festival near Princeton, BC, this weekend literally felt the heat as the event was evacuated due to a wildfire. Princeton RCMP say up to a thousand festivalgoers were safely evacuated from the event in the small village of Coalmont, about 20 kilometres west of Princeton, on Sunday evening. Mounties say a group of four people were riding all-terrain vehicles near the village on Sunday when one of the ATVs caught fire, with flames rapidly spreading toward the community. Princeton RCMP say emergency crews, including BC Wildfire Service personnel, were on scene used ground and aerial resources to battle the blaze.
More properties in the BC Interior have been placed on evacuation alert due to wildfires near Adams Lake. The Thompson-Nicola Regional District says 85 addressed properties are on evacuation alert as of Monday due to the Bush Creek East wildfire. The regional district says it’s also closing a boat launch to keep recreational boaters off the water to allow aircraft to work unimpeded as blazes burn on both sides of the lake, and conservation officers and the RCMP are patrolling to make sure boaters aren’t straying into the path of aircraft. Both the Thompson-Nicola and the Columbia Shuswap Regional Districts have evacuation orders in place for two wildfires burning on opposite sides of Adams Lake – the Lower East Adams Lake wildfire and the Bush Creek East wildfire.
Yukon fire officials say they hope a shift in weather conditions will make battling a blaze inching toward the Village of Mayo easier after an evacuation of the community on Sunday. Yukon fire information officer Haley Ritchie says aerial firefighting efforts were focused on managing the Talbot Creek wildfire about four kilometres outside the small village. Yukon officials say the blaze grew to about 40 square kilometres, and crews from Saskatchewan, Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia are poised to assist with fighting the blaze that spurred the village’s evacuation. There are 126 active wildfires across Yukon, and Ritchie says they are grateful for the outside help during what has been a very challenging wildfire season.
The provincial government has named the latest round of recipients for the Order of British Columbia, including movie star Ryan Reynolds. Reynolds is among 14 new appointees announced by Lieutenant-Governor Janet Austin Monday. Other honourees included Susan Giles and Evanna Brennan, longtime outreach nurses working in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side, music talent scout Sam Feldman and conservationist George Riefel. The province says the Order of BC is intended to recognize residents who have made a significant provincial, national or international impact, and a ceremony for the new appointees will take place in Victoria this fall.
Dr. Penny Ballem says she’s both humbled and honoured being named as appointee to the Order of BC. Ballem says her decades of public service and work as a physician have been a privilege, and she looks back fondly on her years working for the provincial government and as city manager under former mayor Gregor Robertson. She says she wishes the country’s politics favoured co-operation over polarization, and she says she makes it a point to encourage young people to pursue careers in public service. Ballem says she still loves practising medicine despite sleepless nights tossing and turning over the plight of her patients, and says her time working in both health care and government isn’t over and she has no plans to retire any time soon.
BC’s plan to give free air conditioners to low income tenants is cold comfort to some renters, as landlords have been refusing to install cooling units even during times of immense heat. Monica Bhandari with the renter’s advocacy group ACORN, says the province’s plan isn’t helpful to tenants because the program requires landlords to allow for AC units to be installed. Bhandari says requiring landlords to consent is a barrier that carries potential risks for tenants, who may need an AC unit only to be denied when trying to take advantage of the program. Bhandari also says the 8 thousand units promised by the province aren’t nearly enough to fill the need.