Tag Archives: Lytton fire

Cost of Climate Change, Fire

‘This is how we live now’: Families in the age of wildfires

Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Sayward, B.C., resident Shannon Briggs scrolls through family photos on her computer. 

She pauses to contemplate a surreal image of her four-year-old son Stokely standing on a bluff, holding a half-eaten lollipop while a mountain ridge in the background behind him burns up.

“It’s crazy. Kids are so oblivious,” Briggs observes, shaking her head at the juxtaposition of her son’s apparent lack of concern and the gravity of the situation. 

“But talk about a case of ‘this is how we live now,’” Briggs says. 

The picture was taken on Day 4 of the Newcastle Creek wildfire. It was sparked May 29 less than six kilometres from the Village of Sayward on North Vancouver Island. 

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Fire

SRD asks Lytton how it can help

How our local government works

It has been more than three months since the village of Lytton burned to the ground, displacing nearly 1,300 people, and the Strathcona Regional District (SRD) is reaching out to see if it can help. 

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Health, Weather

BC’s death rate triples during heat wave

National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

At minimum, 486 sudden deaths occurred over the past five days in B.C. after dangerously high temperatures gripped coastal and Lower Mainland communities in an unprecedented heat wave this week.

The number is only preliminary, said chief coroner Lisa Lapointe on Wednesday, adding the toll represents a nearly 200 per cent increase over the 165 deaths that would normally occur in the province in the same time period.

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