When the wildfire evacuation order for Argenta was issued at 12:10 a.m. on July 25, not everyone left.
Louis Bockner, Deb Borsos, and a few others stayed behind to help with the evacuation and to help firefighters protect the community from the out-of-control Argenta Creek fire. They are members of community's fire brigade, also known as the Argenta Safety and Preparedness Society (ASAP).
"So far we've laid a sprinkler line in upper Argenta," Bockner told the Nelson Star on the morning of July 25. "Now we're going to go around and help structural protection units from the ministry, help set up pumps ..."
The group is a well-established and well-organized part of the community.
"For 20 years, they've been doing annual training and we do mock drills," Bockner said. "We have very good equipment and some really, really knowledgeable people."
Borsos is one of those 20-year, knowledgeable veterans. She has also worked, at various times since 2012, for the provincial government doing recovery work in communities after flooding and wildfires.
"Argenta has been a stronghold of independent thinkers and doers for decades," she said. "We don't find it strange that for 20 years already we have organized and coordinated our own fire crew to attack fires when they first hit."
Borsos says they work well with BC Wildfire Service crews, not on the front lines of the fire, but in a multi-faceted support role.
In preparation for a possible evacuation such as the one that has just happened, ASAP has divided the community into four zones, each zone with a leader who has lists of residents and phone numbers.
"We had our dispatchers calling everybody to alert them and then we also had crew members on radio, driving around to places where they couldn't get an answer, just to see if they'd already left or if they just didn't know about it," Bockner said.
Borsos gave a list of kinds of things things the brigade has been doing during the evacuation: organizing and expediting various equipment and supplies, putting up signage and ribbons, marking standpipes, watching for spot fires, brushing out out properties, moving flammable material away from buildings, installing water lines and sprinklers, and organizing food for their crew.
"We have people willing to offer food from their garden, people that are chefs and willing to cook and bring meals in or cook at the Community Hall, which is set up community kitchen, and so everybody can just come by when they want to and have a meal."
Borsos has a list of everyone who was evacuated from Argenta and keeps in touch with them all, wherever they might be.
"We have found over the years that as long as you can keep sharing information about things people are going to be nervous about – 'What's going on back there? I'm not there, and I can't be there to protect my home.' So we're trying to just give them updates and say this is happening and that is happening."
Recently the provincial government started the Cooperative Community Wildfire Response program designed to allow more local input into firefighting. It appears Argenta has been equipped for this all along.
"(The province is) realizing that they're stretched thin, they need assets in communities, and local knowledge," said Bockner. "And so they're trying to foster that."
Bockner said the experience of being under an evacuation order is unsettling, but at the same time he feels confident that there are adequate BCWS resources available such as heavy equipment and structural protection crews.
"I really do know that they're putting everything that they can into it."
But Bockner is also confident in the community itself.
"I think Argenta has always had an independent, self-sufficiency streak, and that really shines at the moment."
