Before the fire, Lytton, British Columbia, was the kind of tiny town where visitors stopped mid-road, leaving the Trans-Canada Highway to take in views of the Fraser and Thompson rivers. The Kumsheen Rafting Resort attracted 8,000 visitors a year to tour furious rapids. Lytton was then reduced to ashes in the course of an afternoon.
It was June 30, 2021, the day after the highest temperature ever recorded in the town — and in Canada: 49 degrees Celsius. The fire destroyed the town's grocery store and its Chinese restaurant, along with the Lytton Hotel with its restaurant and tavern, the bank, the police station, the health clinic and all but a handful of the more than 100 homes and businesses, along with a few dozen more along the highway and the nearby Lytton First Nation Indian Reserve.
Two residents died in the fire. Others took refuge in larger cities like Vancouver, three hours away.
Days after the accident, John Horgan, then Premier of British Columbia, promised to help Lytton become a model “for how we build a community for the future.” Pledges from the provincial and federal governments to clean and rebuild public facilities and infrastructure amounted to 115 million Canadian dollars (about $85 million).
However, more than two years after the fire, people – let alone tourists – have been scarce in Lytton. As fires and extreme weather events continue to disrupt tourists' itineraries and pocketbooks, Lytton has become a microcosm of a global challenge—climate change as an unpredictable new variable in the mathematics that underpins seasonal businesses.
Before the fire, about 200 people lived in the town. Hikers, fishermen and other visitors maintained small businesses. Tour buses carried visitors from Europe and Asia.
But the Lytton cleanup, undertaken by a series of contractors working through the provincial government, has moved slowly, exacerbated by conflict in the town's government.
Many residents have not yet found permanent housing. Some services have returned, in disarray: the police detail moved to the site where the health clinic had been and the Lytton First nation opened a grocery store 3 kilometers away.
Kumsheen, which celebrated its 50th anniversary last year, lost C$1 million ($740,000) worth of rafting equipment in the fire. Lorna Fandrich, who operates Kumsheen with her husband and son, was grateful that the insurance payments allowed them to replace much of what they had lost. But it is not a sustainable situation.
To cover the insurance premiums, which amount to $70,000, “you have to sell a lot of raft trips,” he said.
Lytton issued its first permit for a resident to rebuild in October: Lillian Graie, a former town councilwoman, poured new foundations before winter arrived. Although her house is gone, Graie said the things that made her move to Lytton in 2019 are still there. And she is confident that tourists will want to come.
“There are mountains, rivers, forests,” he said. “It's just beautiful.”
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