Bella Coola Day Five

Sailing out out of Bella Coola tomorrow morning
The roads are going to be closed up to five more days so I went down to the travel agent and booked the ferry to port hardy where I will...

drive nearly the length of Vancouver Island to Nanaimo (did this five years ago)
where I'll...

pick up another ferry to Tsawwassen

Which gets my back into the United States!
I think I should start looking for my passport... somewhere... it's here somewhere.

So here is what happened and why I'm changing my route:

When I got here it was record heat and when the ocean gets temps like that it produces lots of large thunderheads and they move inland and produce lightening and fires everywhere.
Since there is only one driving route in there is one driving route out and that would be about 250 miles of forest which has multiple fires going on along it.

Anyway the night before last we got hit with the loudest blast of thunder I have ever heard. It rocked my little trailer... just from the sound wave.
This was about 3:0o AM
The next morning everyone was talking about it and come noontime we saw a patch of smoke coming out of a little canyon about 1/2 mile away.... about 500 feet up the mountain.
Withing just 60 minutes there was a helicopter dropping water on it.
He dropped his bucket in a high mountain lake behind us and flew it over the fire and after 30 trips he doused it pretty good and went home (note my use of the adverbish "pretty" here)

Well it popped back up again later in the evening

Borate bombers came today

We got an evacuation alert reading:

Please note the attached information bulletin re the Bella Coola situation.

Be advised that further to this bulletin, residents along hwy 20 between Mack Road and Snootli Creek, including Walker Island, have been issued evacuation alerts as a precautionary move.

Central Coast Regional District

Bella Coola, BC

The Canadian broadcasting system radio was full of the news about this.
They did telephone interviews of residents with the normal media spin, "Bella Coola residents flee Terror of Fire" yadda yadda

Hell, the entire town turned out to watch the show like a forth of July fireworks display (oops.. I mean Canada day fire works show). People were having BBQs on the side of the road and drinking beer and just taking in the sights
Here's picture of a grandma hip-carrying her toddler child down the road to see the show! to her immediate right is the fire and the show... all the cars of the town are lined up as you can see.

The winds began to shift so I thought I should move out.
spent the night at Clayton Falls down near the ferry but last I heard all is well at Eagle Lodge.