June 16th 2021
Ashley Wohlgemuth remembers smoke, haze and chaos during the 2003 forest fires in her hometown of Barriere in British Columbia.
“During the fire here, it was like driving through a war zone. Everything was hazy. And all you could see was army vehicles and fire trucks everywhere,” said the fire chief.
Throughout the course of the 75-day-long fire, houses, businesses and jobs were lost. Air quality was extremely poor, and she remembers people noticing how it worsened their asthma.