Staying behind: meet the people taking B.C.'s wildfire fight into their own hands

At least 45,000 British Columbians have fled their homes, seeking safety from the wildfires burning throughout the province.

But despite having personally signed the largest evacuation order to date, Williams Lake Mayor Walt Cobb has chosen to stay behind.

"That is my job. What else can I say?" he told Laura Lynch, guest host of CBC's The Current.

"It's my job to look after my community and I want to be sure that I can be here to do absolutely everything I could to make sure that everybody is safe."

He said moving around the empty town is "like you're watching a movie, like an apocalypse."

"I drove around today for a while just to see what I could see and who might be around, and there's no cars in driveways, no lights in windows, nobody walking the streets. It's eerie."

Cobb acknowledges that he's taking a risk by staying behind and said he has no desire to go up against a wall of flames.

He said he and his wife, who has remained with him behind the evacuation lines, will leave when the fire crews do. 

"I never in my life figured we would have to do this."

Despite having defied the evacuation order — Cobb doesn't recommend it to other residents, warning that anyone staying behind should have their dental records on file, in case they need to be identified later.

'We had to beat it'

While most people who see fire run away from it, Dave Burgen had the opposite reaction.

He was busy hosting a backyard barbecue with a few families at his home in Lake Country on Saturday when he noticed a massive amount of smoke coming from down the road.

He and his buddies jumped in a truck to check it out and were alarmed by what they found. 

"On one side of the road there was a forest fire and grass fire spreading like crazy, and on the other side, it was just thick smoke, which is the side where the houses were," he said. 

As residents started started hopping in their cars and driving away, Burgen grabbed a garden hose he spotted leaning up against the closest house.

He and his friends began fighting the fire as best they could, stomping on the grass and spraying at the flames with the hose, desperately trying to contain it. 

"It was like a fight — we had to beat it."

When fire crews arrived 10 minutes later, Burgen noticed there were more hoses than crew members, and they immediately joined in.

"A couple of us were working on the brush fire, a couple of us on the houses. There was one house burnt to the ground, there was a house that was starting to catch fire," he said.

"It was just an intense moment. I've never experienced anything else like it. You see somebody's house up in flames and it was just overwhelming."​

Burgen eventually left when the wind picked up, concerned for his children back at home.

He said the experience has inspired him to become a volunteer firefighter.

"It's made me rethink the whole situation — when people are leaving and getting out of there to save their lives, there's people driving in there to save your home," he said.