Wallace Yahnke surveys the damage done to his home after the Wilson Mountain Road fire. To rebuild or not, that is the question he is pondering. Photo by Lyonel Doherty
Wally Yahnke never thought a fire could burn a tin roof, let alone inside a cave. But he witnessed Mother Nature at her meanest, and never wants to see it again.
“You wouldn’t have been able to outrun it,” said the veteran miner as he surveyed his Wilson Mountain property razed by fire on August 14.
All that is left is a wasteland of burned-out vehicles and charred equipment from mining days past. Oddly, some equipment was left untouched by the fire, while others were seared black only 10 feet away.
“I thought this was a safe place,” Yahnke said, referring to his unique home built against a huge rock that housed three bedrooms and two bathrooms.
“I never thought (the fire) would burn underground. The draft sucked the flames (right in).”
The 83 year old and his son, Joseph Mills, were in the home when the fire hit hard and fast.
Mills said he saw flames on a hill through some trees. “By the time we saw what was going on, the fire was half way down (the hill).”
Both men grabbed as much as they could and hightailed it out of there. Mills noted they didn’t have much time.
“I definitely felt we were on a tight time schedule. If I didn’t notice the flames, the fire would have got to the house (with us in it).”
Yahnke recalled driving away and seeing the flames descending onto his property. When they arrived at the front gate, he opened it and burned his arm.
“The fire was nowhere near the gate but the heat was so bad,” the miner stated.
At this point he met local firefighters who would not let Mills and Yahnke return to the property to use a 2000-gallon water tank to save their home.
“They (firefighters) could have saved the place but they just sat at the gate,” Yahnke said.
Fire officials later stated that it wasn’t safe to send anyone in there.
When all was said and done, Yahnke lost his home and two mobile home trailers. A couple rented one of the trailers, but fortunately they were not home at the time.
The cause of the fire has not been confirmed, but Yahnke believes a strong wind knocked a power line down. He pointed to the top of a power pole (on the hill) where FortisBC technicians were working.
Yahnke said the RCMP had a search warrant for his property, but didn’t find the marijuana grow operation they were looking for.
As for the mess, he has a big job ahead of him, but he hasn’t decided if he’s going to rebuild.
The fire twisted his tin roof into a grotesque piece of art. A charred parking meter, half decapitated, still stood vigil outside the front entrance. A pile of burned coins sat on a ravaged piece of equipment. Yahnke half-joked that the coins were all he had left.
When asked how he built part of his home inside a cave, he recalled having 200 cases of dynamite left over from a contract that went sour.
“I thought I better do something with it . . . nobody would take it (the dynamite) back.”
So he drilled and blasted the crap out of this rock and designed something he called home. Yahnke, who’s been mining since the age of 14, isn’t crying the blues. But people have come forward with offers to help in the form of accommodation and volunteer labour.
Yahnke had no fire insurance on his home.
Ironically, an old fire truck sits in the yard. It too burned up, leaving behind an old shell of a truck, with no rubber left.
By Lyonel Doherty
