A brush fire on an uninhabited island just 500 metres from Salt Spring Island brought as many as 30 residents — and almost as many boats — to fight it with buckets, shovels and eventually a pump and hose, according to witnesses.
And after several calls for assistance — and hours of hard work by local community members — the blaze that started on Third Sister Island Sunday, Sept. 14 was fully extinguished, according to Salt Spring resident Greg Bellavance, one of the first to attend the fire. Bellavance said flames had been spotted by aircraft and shared online, at which point he and Ian Mott decided to race out of Ganges Harbour by boat to see if they could help.
“We throttled up right after the Coast Guard dock,” said Bellavance. “Next thing you know the RCMP boat is approaching us, waving to me to slow down. I pointed toward the island and said we were attending the fire; he gave me the thumbs up and let us go on.”
Bellavance said when he and Mott arrived they immediately began running buckets of water up from the shoreline and shovelling around what had grown to be a 30-by-10-foot fire near the centre of the small island, home to the popular day-trip destination Chocolate Beach.
Nearby, he said, were three people — two “passed out” under trees near where the fire was burning, and a third hanging clothes over smouldering branches.
“They had dragged out coals and burning chunks of wood from the main body of a campfire to dry their clothing,” said Bellavance, who said the trio insisted they did not start the fire.
“I was immediately on the phone with 911, [Mott] was on with BC Forestry,” said Bellavance. “I put a call out to a group chat of my friends who are all users of Chocolate Beach — ‘bring buckets and bodies!’ — and they all mobilized.”
Additional help arrived aboard even more private boats, Bellavance said, after a social media post by his wife Kym. Among the large group, he said, was one islander who came out from the Scott Point side — on a paddle board.
“I don’t know who she was, but she was right in there with the pickaxe,” said Bellavance. “A bunch were shovelling, running buckets; one gentleman showed up on a boat with a small fire pump and a whole bunch of hose. It was a community effort.”
Bellavance said after a frustrating 911 call, one of the volunteers ashore was able to reach police directly, and shortly after the RCMP patrol vessel Lindsay arrived at the island.
“I got on the VHF [radio] with them and asked if they could come ashore,” said Bellavance. “Which they did, and they took one guy away; a couple of hours later someone came out with a little tinny and the other two left with their three dogs.”
Messages to RCMP were not returned before press time; any campfire would be in contravention of a strict and nearly province-wide fire ban, in place until the end of October.
Responding to inquiries, Salt Spring Island Fire Rescue (SSIFR) Chief Jamie Holmes said that while assistance for out-of-jurisdiction fires can sometimes be arranged outside the department’s official capacities, SSIFR operations are strictly limited by its letters patent and bylaws. When a fire situation arises outside the district, another authority having jurisdiction needs to request SSIFR’s help; and, Holmes said, they can only respond if a mutual aid agreement is in place or a provincial task number is assigned — and when enough coverage remains in place to fully protect Salt Spring Island.
“Unfortunately, when it comes to response protocols, we don’t have a lot of leeway,” said Holmes. “Sometimes there are ways we can offer support without the actual agency responding, but we can’t respond to just anything we want to.”
Holmes told fire district board members Monday night that SSIFR did contact BC Forest Service but were told their firefighting resources were “tied up on other fires.”
“They said if they had a helicopter in the area it would swing by,” said Holmes. “But I think by the time their resources cleared up, some good citizens had tackled the problem on their own.”
The district has looked into fire boats in the past, according to Holmes, but plans never materialized largely over costs, which would necessarily require not only a commercial vessel but also employing a highly-trained captain and paying for annual skills training and certifications.
“Buying a boat is actually the cheapest part of it,” Holmes said.
Notably, Sunday was the second impromptu firefighting effort for Bellavance in recent years. During the extremely dry conditions in the summer of 2022, Bellavance contained a brush fire discovered up Mount Maxwell Road with his bobcat until fire trucks arrived.
In the summer of 2003, Ganges Coast Guard transported four of Salt Spring’s volunteer firefighters to Third Sister Island to respond to a small nighttime fire, according to Driftwood reporting.
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While not everyone who participated in extinguishing the Sept. 14 fire was known, Bellavance was able to pull together the following names to thank for helping, in addition to himself and Ian Mott: Dale Dow, Jeff Whitmore, Trevor Kaye, Nick and Celine Boychuk, Nick Ogilvie, Matt Kerrigan, Tom Miller, Allan Maten (and friend), Garrett O’Dwyer, Jann Helssen, Kim Duchek, Sal and Shauna, Cochise and Ginny, Ernesto, Jill, Chris, Cyrus, Tom, Andrea, personnel on the RCMP Lindsay and anyone forgotten or misspelled.