The Columbia Shuswap Regional District is asking its residents to share what their experiences were during last summer’s Bush Creek East wildfire.

CSRD spokesperson Tracy Hughes says they want to hear about things that worked and things that didn’t work, so it can make changes ahead of the 2024 wildfire season.

“The CSRD is not in charge of fighting wildfires, so we can’t speak to how BC Wildfire fought this fire but what we are in charge of is evacuations,” Hughes said.

“We’d really like to hear from folks about the evacuation process, the communication that happened, the emergency support services, and have them let us know what they think we could do better.”

“We’d like to take a look back, so that we can implement some changes in time for this coming fire season. There is a chance we could have another major incident and we want to improve.”

Hughes says the CSRD has hired a consultant – Monogram Communications – to facilitate a number of in-person and virtual sessions in March where people can have their say. Residents can also fill out an online survey, which will be available under March 17.

“The CSRD shouldn’t be conducting its own investigations so we wanted someone from the outside to come in,” Hughes said. “CSRD staff will be guided by this firm and they’re the ones that are going to be listening to everybody’s comments and then generating a report.”

Hughes also said this latest round of engagement builds off what was done at a number of pop-up events in September and October.

“We’ve now had a chance to let people sort of let their thoughts percolate and maybe be a bit more thoughtful about their responses,” Hughes said.

“Everybody went through such a traumatic experience with this fire, and sometimes you need to let that sit for a bit before you can come back and think about improvements.”

The Bush Creek East wildfire grew to 456 sq. kilometres and destroyed 176 homes and cabins in the North Shuswap alone. About 50 other properties were partially damaged by the fire, which went on a massive 20-kilometre run in mid-August, because of sustained winds brought on by a cold front.

Another nine properties were destroyed in the Adams Lake area of the Thompson-Nicola Regional District, with 85 structures on Skwla̓x te Secwe̓pemcu̓lecw land also destroyed.

“This has been a very tight timeline because we know that we need to get out and talk to people in time so that we can implement some of these recommendations for this coming fire season,” Hughes said.

“We may not be able to do all of them, but we certainly want to get started and then we want to commit to that process of continuous improvement.”