'We try to make the best of it:' Williams Lake B.C. wildfire evacuees await permission to return home
Officials can't say when up to 24,000 residents will be able to return to their homes
Steve Koch has a trick for figuring out if his house, just north of Williams Lake, B.C., is still standing, since he left two weeks ago due to wildfire risk.
He borrows a phone from a friend at the emergency centre in Kamloops where he has been staying for the past week and dials his land line.
"After four rings, the answering machine answers and that way I know that I have a) power and b) it's still there," he described on Sunday.
"So I know it's there. I know it's safe. I know it's fine."
Koch is one of thousands of residents from around Williams Lake, B.C., who have spent at least a week from their homes after being forced out by wildfires.
Many are staying in and around Kamloops, where an emergency station at the Sandman Centre at one point was sleeping up to 700 people.
The centre and the city continue to support evacuees with free meals, clothes, medical help and even entry into attractions to keep busy.
People like Bridget Dan, from Alkali Lake, B.C., says all the help is making being away from home easier to accept.
"We've been ever so grateful," she said. "They have things for people to do. They've just been extremely welcoming, I just feel at home."
Still, as comfortable as most evacuees say they feel in Kamloops, they all say the same thing.
'We just want to go home'
"I know that my house is still standing up Fox Mountain [just outside Williams Lake]," said Jeannette Fischer. "That calms my nerves. But now we just want to go home."
Fischer says she's lucky in that she was able to take her two children, her nanny, two horses, three dogs and cat to a rural property outside Kamloops to stay.
They swim in the pool there, but also come into town to spend time along the river and also see some of the city's attractions.
"We are very fortunate. The kids are very happy. They see it as a vacation … we try to make the best of it."
'Have to manage the risk': mayor
Residents were hoping to go home early this week. On Monday morning however, Williams Lake Mayor Walt Cobb said the fire is still a threat to the city.
He said the evacuation order will be lifted when the fire centre says the fire is under control and the highways are open in both directions.
"We have to manage the risk and make sure the risk is low enough to go home," he said.
Listen to Mayor Cobb on CBC's The Early Edition:
Cobb warned that even if the evacuation order is lifted, the alert will probably remain for a long time.
"There is no guarantee that this evacuation would not happen again until the fires are absolutely out," he said, predicting it could be September or October until that happens.
"We have a fire season ever year but we've never had anything so close to town before."
Prepared to wait
Ken Monefedlt says he's prepared to wait.
The auto mechanic from Williams Lake said he had a lot of stress when he first arrived in Kamloops, because he had lost track of his ill mother.
Now she is being cared for in hospital in Kamloops — he goes to see her daily.
"I've calmed down and everything's OK," he said of his time so far in Kamloops.
He doesn't want officials to rush people back to home, until they're absolutely sure, conditions are safe.
"I can't see any reason why they would send us home until they were darn sure…because the whole [town] wouldn't want to go through this again."