Photo: Gerry Thiessen

A community meeting Wednesday evening in Fort St. James

Residents in Fort St. James and the surrounding First Nation communities are packing their bags as the Shovel Lake wildfire rages out of control.

The blaze was remapped at a staggering 68,000 hectares Wednesday night. It continues to move east towards Highway 27, the main link for Fort St. James to Vanderhoof and Highway 16.

“The resounding message, was that is is much better to voluntarily evacuate now, while the paved highway is still open and there is less stress,” Stacey Parcher Karey summarized a community meeting in Fort St. James last night.

A RCMP representative at the meeting said they are pushing for an evacuation order to be issued while the highway is still open, to avoid a back road evacuation of the town of about 2,000 people.

“That’s been the bane of my existence,” the officer told the crowd in a livestream of the event posted to Facebook. “We are pushing for an evacuation order, so it can be done over the course of a few days.”

“We are trying to move that along as best we can to say, look, there is the highway, like any other mass exodus there is going to be a little bit of trauma,” he said, explaining that is why they are asking people to consider leaving before they are ordered. He noted that evacuation orders are not RCMP jurisdiction.

Evacuees are being asked to head to Prince George, because the nearby communities of Vanderhoof and Burns Lake are full.

“We will be asked to be good neighbours, as people were asked to consider if they should leave,” Vanderhoof mayor Gerry Thiessen said.

The Nak’azdli Whut'en First Nation has been conducting a voluntary evacuation, with nearly 300 residents fleeing the reserve over the past few days.

Incident commander Jim Richardson called the Shovel Lake fire a “very large and very angry fire.” He said he was hopeful that the fire would slow its growth because it's moving from dead pine to green forest.

One-hundred and thirteen firefighters are currently attacking the fire, supported by eight helicopters and dozens of pieces of heavy equipment.