Lytton's mayor describes village's ongoing challenges 3 years after devastating wildfire

Well, the town of Litton is now synonymous with the devastating wildfires of June 30th, 2021. Now, that fire burned the village nearly to the ground, making headlines around the world. It also marked Litton as a Canary in the coal mine of climate change. Now the village is preparing to mark the third year anniversary of that fire and looking ahead to work on the rebuilding. Now, Denise O'Connor is the mayor of Litton, and she's been good enough to join us this morning. Good morning to you, Mayor O'Connor. Good morning, Steven. Thank you so much for taking the time with us. For those who have not been to Litton or seen pictures of it since the rebuild began, can you describe what the village looks like now? Because most people have in their memories, you know, visions of, of ashes at this moment. Well, you know, Litton is, is located on a bench above the Fraser River. And it, it is the debris is all removed. The blue fences are down the all of the not all of the properties, nearly all of them have been back filled, which means clean soil has been brought in and and leveled off. And so now the majority of the properties have been turned over to, to property owners to, to do with it what they like, which is rebuilding. And how much of that rebuilding has actually begun? Yeah, it's really only started. We issued our first building permit back in December of last year, but there's been more, more happen this spring. Currently there are, I believe 7 buildings under construction and then another just this week, another three properties. The excavation has started on them for, for putting in foundations and, and so are there any other buildings being built other than residential buildings? Yeah, the, the Chinese History Museum is, is being built at this time and we have approved the development permit for the grocery store. And again, just last week they received their building permit. So it hasn't started yet, right? Yeah. And, and tell me about the the hoops people have had to jump through for this, because it seemed to be a very, very long time before people were even allowed back on the property. What were all of the the impediments that people were facing? Yeah. You know, that that first, first year in particular, the blue fences remained up. The the debris was not removed. And so it was just a long, long wait of wondering what was going on that first full year. And then they finally in June of 22, they started removing debris out of the out of the community. And, and then of course, after that, they had to wait for soil to be remediated. And then as that's happening, archaeology went on and up until the backfilling, which again started, I guess about a year ago in June 23, right. You know, you look at a project like after the flooding, the Cocahalla Hwy. which was washed out in so many locations, I mean, you know, a major, major project. And and it seemed to me that, you know, I mean, they had basically rebuilt that highway before anybody broke ground and building anything back in Litton. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, a lot of lot of residents, a lot of property owners are are, you know, questioned that as well. Tell me what you're what you're doing differently or what people are doing differently as they rebuild because, you know, there's always that build back better idea. Yeah. So, you know, you know, as a, as a village council, we put in a building by law that meets the BC building code, which takes, it takes a building to step three of the energy code, as well as fire resilient, fire resistant. And so, you know, people are choosing to do things better to, to build well, their buildings will be more energy efficient, more, more fire resilient, right. And, and you actually came out of retirement to run for mayor in 2022. You said then that you wanted to get to the bottom of why the rebuild was stalled. What did you find out? You know, I didn't find out, I found out that it took too long And, and I did, I don't know that I, I wanted to get to the bottom of why it took long. What I wanted to do was to move things forward, to keep things going, to see what we could do to speed it up. And I think, I think for the most part, we have, we've had, we've, we've accomplished a lot. I mean, this past year as a new mayor and council and. And what would you list as top among your achievements? Yeah, well, we removed the state of local emergency, which was on for two years. We removed that. We got people. Oh, we got the back filling completed. We opened up a temporary village office right in the village. We got the water and sewer up and up and running again with potable water right through the village. There are a lot of things and what's happening in the areas around the village. I mean, we spoke with after the fire, we spoke with many First Nations who were affected by by the fire as well. Do we know what the status is there? Yeah. You know, I can't speak, I can't speak for them, but I do know they're, they are rebuilding as well on reserve because there were many, many that that lost their homes as well. Yes. Right. And your own home burned down in 2021. How close are you to, to we're getting it rebuilt? Well, I received my building permit about a week, about a month ago. And then I've just heard by the end of this week, excavations should start on my property. I guess you obviously look forward to a time where, you know, people can go through Litton and, and, you know, perhaps not know that anything has happened there. How long do you think it'll be before that? Oh, it's going to be, it's going to be quite a while. You know, it's, it's not. That's one thing I've learned as mayor here. Things do not move quickly in government. I, I thought maybe we could speed things up, but it, it's doesn't happen that way. And then of course, people are still property owners are still wondering what decision to make around their properties. You know, we do have residential properties going up. There's still others with people without insurance, you know, that do not have the means to, to rebuild a home on the property. They own commercial buildings. There's been about 5 lots that have sold over the last three years. And so we don't know what what people are the new owners are planning for those, you know, until they start applying for building permits and such. So it, it is going to take take quite a while. And speaking to you today, we did also request an interview with Bowen MA, the BCS Minister of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness. She declined, but she did. She was interviewed earlier this earlier this spring and and she talked about the province's disaster recovery process. And she said then that the province was working off a community LED model where they would fund a rebuild led by local government, but that Litton council didn't have the capacity in the first year to lead in that way. What do you think of that? Yeah, I would agree. I would agree, you know, small rural community, I don't believe any, any small rural community has the capacity to lead such a such an endeavor. You know, in our situation in Lytton, we lost everything, including all of the corporate records or almost all of the corporate records and bylaws and all of that kind of thing. You know, the, the community LED recovery seemed to be a A1 size fits all. And, and you know, in a different interview fairly recently, I've heard Bo and Ma suggest maybe differently, that maybe community LED recovery isn't the way to go for, for all disasters. Where do you expect your town to be by this time next year? Oh, people moved in and living in their homes. Hopefully that grocery store has either started or or opened. Yeah, we're going to start seeing people walking up and down the streets, you know, the people that are living in their in their homes. It's really hard to say. It's really hard to predict. But Mayor O'Connor, it's really good to hear you. Thank you for taking the time with us this morning. And, and really best of luck. And you have been on our minds. Thank you so much, Steven. We appreciate that. OK, you take care. Bye. Bye. Thanks. Bye. Bye. That is Denise O'Connor, the mayor of Litton.