When Steven Larabie saw the wildfire crest the ridge near his home just outside of Clinton, B.C., he knew he had to leave.
The owner of Steve’s Towing and Auto Repair has been living there for 12 years and survived the massive Elephant Hill wildfire, which burned more than 1,900 square kilometres of forests, grasslands and properties in the summer of 2017.
Last Friday, Larabie came face-to-face with the massive Pear Lake wildfire.
“It was around about 9:00 in the morning when I got the first call from another person up on Kelly Lake Road and said that the fire was coming down over the ridge in their backyard and they were getting ready to leave,” he told Global News.
By 2:30 p.m., the fire crested the first hill and was moving rapidly toward his home.
“By like 3.30, quarter to four, there was nothing left,” he said.
The Pear Lake wildfire seen near Steven Larabie’s home.
Steven Larabie
He had previously told his wife, his daughter and his grandchildren to leave the area while he stayed behind.
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“Then I started moving my equipment, putting it in a field. Hopefully I didn’t lose all my excavators,” Larabie said.
“It didn’t make a difference.”
He said he was able to save about six pieces of equipment, but he lost everything else, including his mini excavator, four excavators and a thousand cars in his auto wrecker, including ICBC’s vehicles, totalling millions of dollars.
“The fire came over the ridge. I’m, like, I got to go,” he said.
He realized he had forgotten to grab his cat, his brother’s ashes, and his daughter’s ashes.
Larabie’s daughter was killed 11 years ago when she was hit by a train while walking home from school in Maple Ridge.
“I went back in the house, but the hydro had already been turned off,” he said.
“So I had to get my cellphone, run back to my truck, grab my phone, turn my camera on and go find it. I managed to grab the shoes that were made for me when my daughter passed away, but I didn’t get anything else, no pictures. I lost everything, everything you can think of.”
He said he was left with his T-shirt, shorts and sandals.
“That fire came over the ridge and it sounded like two 747 jets were ready to land in my lake. The sound of the decibels were so loud that you couldn’t stand there and the heat, the heat was like intense and the wind was like a tornado,” Larabie added.
“And it was just crazy. I never, ever heard something like that. So I started to leave, trying to get going and I could smell the mud flaps on my truck starting to melt because the heat was so intense.
“And the fire came down, it ripped right through my backyard, wiped out the neighbour’s house, and then it turned and wiped and went just straight through my yard, like just straight down the middle of it. Took everything all the way right down the hill.”
The wildfire seen near Steven Larabie’s home.
Steven Larabie
Larabie said others in the area lost their homes.
“When I was leaving, that fire was faster than I was and I was doing a buck thirty out of there and the fire came over the ridge, went through my yard and raked down my main and I was leaving, that fire passed me,” he said.
“By the time I got to Six Mile Lake, which is only three kilometres or so from my house, that fire was already in front of me and on both sides of the highway. And it was literally like little bombs of flames dropping out of the sky.”
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