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The Current Transcript for September 1, 2017

Host: Laura Lynch

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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JD: Tonight:

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JEFF BLAIR: The biggest issue with Art Briles is that it happened on his watch. And anybody who knows anything about college football, knows that nothing happens on a college football team that the head coach doesn't know about.

LAURA LYNCH: That is sportscaster Jeff Blair, weighing in on a story that has rocked the Canadian Football League and beyond this week. Because what's alleged to have happened under coach Art Briles watch is a string of sexual assaults and rapes by U.S. college players. Coach Briles was fired from a U.S. school following the scandal. So why did the Hamilton Tiger-Cats decide to hire him on? They have since reversed that decision, but it has us talking First up today about the off-field fumble by a CFL team and the culture of college football and sexual assault. Then, it has been a long, hard summer in the interior of British Columbia with wildfires destroying homes and putting lives on hold.

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WOMEN: I can't wait to go home and I don't know when that will be. And I can't wait because I just love home. I'm a little homebody with my flowers and my dog. And I want to go home.

LL: An encore presentation of my documentary from the town of Ashcroft, B.C. in a about a half an hour from now. And Anna Maria Tremonti will be by later in the show for a look ahead at the upcoming season.

LL: I'm Laura Lynch and this is the summer edition of The Current.

Part 1: ‘They don’t understand what consent is’: Journalist on college football’s sexual assault culture

Guest: Paula Lavigne

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SCOTT MITCHELL: What was being contemplated was totally unacceptable to the general public, obviously, and the media. I think that when we took a step back and a chance to talk to the league and some of our partners and some of our fans you know what we what we thought was an opportunity to give somebody a second chance was clearly not acceptable in relation to what previously happened and what he had been involved with.

LL: That is Scott Mitchell, The Chief Executive Officer of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, of the Canadian Football League. He was facing the media this week over the controversial hiring and then firing of a new football coach. Art Briles is his name and he's the former head coach of an American college team the Baylor University Bears. But while he was at Baylor, Art Briles was caught up in one of the most infamous sexual assault scandals in U.S. collegiate history. A number of players on the team were accused of and arrested for rape and sexual assault. In 2016, Art Briles was fired from the university because of the scandal. And so word that he would be coaching the Ti-Cats touched off controversy on both sides of the border. Paula Lavigne is an investigative reporter with ESPN. Together with her colleague Mark Schlabach, they brought Baylor's dark secret into the light. They're the authors of a new book called “Violated: Exposing Rape at Baylor University Amid College Football's Sexual Assault Crisis. Paula Levine joins me now from Omaha, Nebraska. And a warning: this interview will deal with some disturbing material. Hello Paula.

PAULA LAVIGNE: Hello, thanks for having me on.

LL: What did you think when you heard that Art Briles was going to be hired by the Hamilton Tiger-Cats as an Assistant Offensive Head Coach?

PL: Well, when our book came out last week, my colleague Mark Schlabach and I got this question a lot: where is Art Briles going to end up? And we were in agreement that he was not going to end up coaching collegiate football at the level he was coaching at in the States. We kind of thought he might end up as an assistant in the NFL. And so to hear that he was getting an assistant position in the CFL seemed to sort of fit in with where we thought he might go.

LL: And were you surprised at what happened after that?

PL: You know I personally was. I had kind of thought OK, this is what's going to happen. And the former athletic director, Ian McCaw, who is actually from Ontario, he got a job at Liberty University in Virginia and there were protests when he was hired, but they kept him on. And I was actually surprised that I think it was like 11 hours later, the Hamilton team decided to part ways with Briles and we know that was largely due to the backlash from the public about his hiring. Let's talk a little bit more about Art Biles himself. What was his reputation as a coach before the scandal broke at Baylor last year?

PL: His reputation as a coach prior to the scandal was stellar. I mean he took one of the worst teams in college football in the states and turned it into an elite program, a program where we're guys wanted to go, a program that was in contention for being the national championship-winning program in the country. I mean it was a complete and utter turnaround. And by virtue of a lot of the guys he brought in over the years. So yeah, before all this came out, he was really seen as you know a top, standup admired coach.

LL: How did he manage to attract all those great players to a place that had such a bad reputation of the team? And by reputation I mean as a playing team.

PL: I mean you know he had a great staff of assistants, he really you know brought them in and you know did a really good job recruiting. And you know I think part of the issue that came up is they weren't doing as good of a job maybe as other universities in vetting some of these guys. I mean I think there's been the allegation out there that they took some guys that other teams might not have taken because of some of their history.

LL: Give me an idea about Baylor University itself as an academic institution.

PL: So Baylor itself, beyond the football program, had been really trying for like the last 10 years to establish it as one of the more prestigious universities. They hired a new president — a president that had some notoriety beyond academics. They hired Ken Starr, who was known previous to his role at Baylor as being the special prosecutor who brought former President Bill Clinton to impeachment over his dishonesty about his affair with the White House intern. So they bring this sort of big name in. Ken Starr is known for doing wonderful external work for the university, really being a cheerleader for the university. He loved running out on the field with the freshmen at the start of the games. He was a great fund-raiser and was really trying to bring Baylor up into the ranks academically and as a research university as well.

LL: It’s also a Baptist university, is that correct?

PL: Yes. Yes, it is the world's largest Baptist university and that was a big part of its culture. And actually a big part of what happened with the sexual assault scandal there.

LL: How so?

PL: So one would think perhaps that being a religious Christian-based university that it would be a place where people who might report something bad happening to them would get counseling and welcoming. That was the complete opposite. There was the Baptist mentality of you know we don't do these things. You know drinking wasn't allowed, obviously, drug use wasn't allowed. They frowned on premarital sex. They didn't even allow dancing on campus until the late 1990s. So there was a real mentality of these things just don't happen here, but they were. I mean just like on any other college campus in the United States, kids were drinking, they were smoking dope, they were having sex. And by Baylor and it's Baptist values not even willing to acknowledge that and not wanting to sort of besmirch their image. They couldn't accept that even premarital consensual sex was having. So for them to admit that there was violent non-consensual sex happening, they just couldn't get there. And by ignoring that, they would not address all these women who were coming forward to different entities throughout the campus reporting that they've been violently raped.

LL: You started digging into allegations of rape and sexual assault involving players on the football team. What got you onto the story in the first place?

PL: There was a football player who was convicted in the fall of 2015. His name was Sam Ukwuachu. And, at the time, there was a publication in Texas — a news magazine — called Texas Monthly that published a story about his conviction. And the thing that really stood out about it was first of all that it was under the radar until he actually went to trial, which in the United States is pretty unusual, especially for a member of a high-profile football team like that. But second, a criminal jury, which has a very high standard of proof found him guilty, after a university judicial affairs process that actually cleared him. And a university judicial affairs process has a much lower standard of proof. And so the school knew that they had a problem in in the reporting of this story in this in this news magazine and they also pointed out some issues with how the university had treated the young woman. That got us onto looking closer at Baylor because just a year or so earlier, they had another football player who had been convicted of rape and five women had accused him of either raping or physically assaulting them. And so we went back to those women. And what was interesting was that they had talked about the horrible things they said that this football player did to them, but they also talked in great detail about how difficult it was to get any help or any acknowledgement at Baylor to helping them after the fact with counseling, with their academics. You know some of these women had had dropped out. It was just that part of it I think was really starting to come to light. And that is what led us to think this is much deeper than these two guys.

LL: Now, I just want to play a very short piece of tape here. This is Art Briles on ESPN in 2016, speaking about the scandal involving his football team.

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ART BRILES: I understand I've made some mistakes. There were some bad things that happened under my watch. I was the captain of the ship. The captain of a ship goes down with it.

Now Paula Lavigne, did Art Briles ever admit to knowing that some of his players had been accused of rape or sexual assault?

PL: He has said that he never played someone that he knew had been accused of sexual assault. He has said that he never met directly with a woman who reported being the victim of a sexual assault. That he never actively deterred anyone from reporting any incident of sexual assault or domestic violence. You

know clearly at some point in the criminal process, he did know about some of these things. But in terms of knowing in advance — knowing much before the public knew about these — he has said that he didn't know. There was a notable case with one of these guys, who in the fall of 2011, was convicted of misdemeanor assault and then actually received a ticket for it, was in the school's Judicial Affairs system and coach Art Briles says he didn't even know about that until months later.

LL: If that's true that he said he didn't know about it. Who would have known — who should have known — in the athletic department about the accusations.

PL: There were other administrators in the athletic department who knew about that incident and who knew about other incidents. Sometimes they were administrators in the athletic department. Other times they were assistant coaches.

LL: There are multiple allegations of gang rape and you discovered there may have been quite a shocking motive behind those attacks. Tell me about that?

PL: Right, there have been multiple lawsuits that have come from this on behalf of many of the women involved. And one of those lawsuits states that football players were using these violent gang rapes as bonding experiences, especially involving recruits. There was a woman and in “Violated” we describe what she describes as one of two gang rapes she experienced. And she talks about how after this all happened she thinks that there were upwards of 10 to 15 guys who were trying to have sex with her. And she believed a number of them could have been recruits. That sort of that sort of… I hate to say it… team mentality is something that's not unique to Baylor when you hear about some of these allegations of sexual assault.

LL: Did any of the assault victims go to Baylor's campus police with their accusations?

PL: Several of them did. And in Baylor itself found that its campus police department was a real barrier in this whole process. The board of regents, who are the governing body for Baylor, described to us one particular incident where a woman came and was talking to the police chief about her alleged rape and he said something to the effect of. Well honey, you know if you hadn't been drinking you know maybe this wouldn't happen to you. There was a lot of victim blaming. There were a number of cases where they would go to Baylor police and the women said they would be deterred from reporting. They would be deterred from even giving out the name of the person they said raped them. There was a real mentality that the regents found with the Baylor police department that they were more interested in giving students parking tickets and citing them for liquor violations than they were for really addressing some of the problems that were happening on this campus.

LL: You managed to speak to former members of the football team. What did they say about this?

PL: Well, I think that's one of the interesting things that we have in “Violated” is that as hard as it is, we got the other side of some of these football players and a couple things. One, you know in terms of one of the gang rapes you know you hear one of these players saying well, you know I thought she was into this. We all thought this was her reputation. If you don't hear what their mentality is it's hard to fix it. And it's clear from some of the things they're saying that they don't understand what consent is. Like the one that I thought was sort of jaw dropping to me was one of the former football players, I was interviewing him and after all of this scandal sort of broke, the university finally brought some people in to train these guys about sexual violence and consent. And this former football player said that when the trainer told them that if a woman is drunk she cannot consent to sex, which is law in Texas, he said guys eyes just popped open. I think the quote in the book is, “that really spooked a lot of guys.” It's saddening to think that this is the first time that these guys have heard this. Like this is something they should have heard right as they came on the campus. Because you know who knows, maybe if they if they would have known this, maybe if they would have been aware some of these things would have happened there.

LL: As you said, there have been other cases where other university athletes have been accused and arrested for rape and sexual assault. But you characterize what happened at Baylor as a game changer. How so?

PL: Right, so I think there are two things. One, is that this just the sheer volume of cases that that came out. To be clear, what happened at Baylor is a campus wide problem. It wasn't just within the athletic department, but the university at one point acknowledges that there were 125 cases. Other investigators there have said there's upwards to 400. But they say you know 10 per cent of those likely involve student athletes, which is a minority, but still an overrepresentation because student athletes represent only 4 per cent of the males on campus. The second thing is that this thing happened at Baylor at the same time that there was a cultural shift in the United States in terms of how we think about campus sexual assault. And the Obama administration was forcing universities to investigate these cases because previously, these incidents had been sort of seen as one-offs. They’d been seen as well that was a bad guy. You know the cops investigated, there was a criminal case, you know he got punished or he didn't get punished, that was pretty much it. When the federal government was requiring universities to investigate these cases they were looking more at why did this lead to this? And were looking more at is there a bigger cultural problem? And I think that is exactly what happened at Baylor. When you start looking at some of these cases, you stop looking at them as individual one-offs and you start looking at was there a bigger system here in place that enabled this sort of behavior and that prevented any sort of proactive you know training or awareness to keep it from happening again? And I think that was really what I think should be a message to other campuses across the across North America. That you know you can't look at these as one-offs. You need to understand that this happens and this has not happened in a vacuum and you need to you need to get on this.

LL: Now, you already referred to the findings of an investigation. A third-party was brought in by the university to look into all of this. Tell me briefly what were the findings? And what is Baylor University doing today to address sexual assaults on campus?

PL: So the university hired a third-party law firm out of Philadelphia to investigate their whole campus. And in May of 2016, they came out with this, for lack of a better term, incredibly damning report on Baylor overall saying that the university failed in multiple ways to help these women, to investigate their cases. Within that report, there were a couple of pages that were even more critical of the football program.

LL: I'm sorry to interrupt, we’ve just got about 30 seconds left. So I just wanted to get you to just to tell us what Baylor is doing today.

PL: Sure. Yeah, so in response to all of that they have cleaned house. They have, obviously, a new president, a new athletic director, a new head football coach. They have instituted training programs, they have added more counselors. They have improved their investigative process for handling sexual violence complaints. And they want now to be seen as a model for other universities to follow. They want to be seen now as like the most proactive university out there in addressing sexual violence. And although they have all these things in place, they still need to change the culture and we'll have to see if that happens.

LL: Paula Lavigne, I thank you very much for your time.

PL: Thank you.

LL: Paula Lavigne is the co-author of “Violated: Exposing Rape at Baylor University Amid College Football’s Sexual Assault Crisis.” She was in Omaha, Nebraska. We contacted the Hamilton Tiger-Cats to see if they wanted to add anything to the statements they've already released on the hiring and dismissal of Art Briles. We didn't hear back. Earlier this month, Baylor University issued a public statement on the book in which it said, “We share the authors’ view that student sexual violence is a complex and important problem that defies simple solutions. We're deeply sorry for anyone connected with the Baylor community who's been harmed by sexual violence. This book focuses on tragic events that took place several years ago. Since then, Baylor has hired a new president, a new director of athletics, and a new head football coach. We've also revised our policies and our procedures for addressing and preventing sexual violence.”

LL: Well, the CBC news is coming up next. Then, a special guest… Anna Maria Tremonti drops by the studio to fill us in on some of what's in store when the regular season gets underway on Monday. I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

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Part 2: Encore: “They’re not just numbers. These are people we kow’: Ashcroft, B.C.’s wildfire devastation.

LL: Hello I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

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LL: Coming up: stories from the summer of wildfires in. But first, back to our regularly scheduled programming. Today, is the final day of the summer season. And that means on Monday, Anna Maria Tremonti will be back in the host chair, kicking off a new season of The Current. Right now, she joins us with a preview of what's in store. Hello to you.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Hi, Laura.

LL: Welcome back.

AMT: Well thank you.

LL: Are you rested? Are you ready to go?

AMT: I'm ready to go. We've got a whole new season planned, as much as you can plan for so much changing in this world, and so much news and so many events going on, yes.

LL: But as with every season of The Current there is a theme. What's the theme going to be this year?

AMT: This one is adaptation.

LL: OK, last year was disruption.

AMT: That's right. So first we’re disrupted, and then we adapt. Or you know you adapt or you die. Or you know like I will survive kind of thing. But we're talking about what happens after disruptions. And when we talk about adaptation we're talking about everything from technology to health care. From climate change to wars, to migration, to any kind of change that forces people to reconsider the way they live their lives and how did they have to adapt for that. So we're going to be looking throughout the season on the current and maybe surprising or maybe innovative even ill-advised ways that people or communities governments or maybe animals adapt or try to accommodate change in how that adaptation occurs and where it leads.

LL: It opens up a lot of possibilities and discussions. What's coming up first.

AMT: Well something that's pretty timely actually. We're looking at flooding and we're looking at adaptation not through what we see going on around us. Obviously, the stories in Texas and Louisiana right now. If you look at flooding that happened in Quebec and parts of Ontario this past year. If you look at the huge flooding that Calgary had a couple of years ago. We're going to look at the city of Burlington, Ontario because it had a flood where literally the rains opened up. It was sunny one moment the next moment they were inundated with rain. They had so many homes flooded, basements, backups everything else. And so the city of Burlington decided it needed to adapt and it changed some of the ways it was going to do things in terms of individual homes and what's available to people to change their homes. And so we're going to look at this one place to see how you adapt because I don't know if you realize this or if our listeners realize this, but we talk a lot about climate change. The way that climate change manifests in Canada is through two things: flooding and fires. You know all about fires in B.C. this summer and you know fires in Manitoba and elsewhere as well. But that is related to climate change and people can argue about the degree of that, but the insurance companies have already decided. And they are starting to change the way they insure things because of people's vulnerability to things like flooding. So we're looking at what's going on in Burlington and what we can all learn from that.

LL: That sounds fascinating. Over the next few weeks what else are you looking forward to on the agenda?

AMT: Well, you can't talk adaptation without talking animals and evolution. It's produced a lot of unusual animals over time.. the platypus and the aye-aye. Do you know what an aye-aye is?

LL: No.

AMT: I didn't either, but it's an animal in Madagascar that has evolved to have one long finger to go into trees and grab grubs. And while it was adapting on one side of the planet, the woodpecker was adapting on the other side of the planet. So we're looking at how evolution and adaptation work and what scientists are learning now. Because instead of looking back at fossils and looking at how things change over thousands and millions of years, scientists are discovering you can do experiments over as little as a decade and see how animals adapt and evolve.

LL: And you're going to be speaking to some awfully interesting writers.

AMT: I am. I'm speaking to Malcolm Gladwell about adaptation. You know who he is. He's got his own podcast now “Revisionist History”. And so we're looking at how we adapt to the stories of our lives and you know there's a real political intersection there. We'll talk to Malcolm Gladwell about what he's thinking about all of that. We're talking to someone and I’ll call her one of our own even though she's not at CBC now, but the name will be familiar to you: Pauline Dakin. Pauline's personal story is fascinating. That's all I'm going to tell you right now. She was essentially on the run with her mom and her brother for a good part of her life and she didn't realize what was going on. Many twists in her story, so we'll hear from Pauline Dakin.

LL: Well, Anna Maria, I know all of our listeners are looking forward to hearing you back in the chair on Monday. But you have a good Labor Day weekend.

AMT: You as well.

LL: Bye bye.

AMT: Bye bye.

LL: Anna Maria Tremonti, she will be back hosting The Current as of Monday. Well, Anna Maria mentioned B.C.’s wildfires. They have been raging all summer and they are still burning. In July, shortly after the province declared a state of emergency, I traveled to B.C.’s interior and into one of the areas that was hardest hit. Within minutes, the Ashcroft Indian Reserve was all but gone. Most homes disappearing into smoke and ash when the wildfire arrived and the people of Ashcroft were left struggling to accept what was lost and to search for a way forward.

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I’m going to take the dinner buns. You guys scoop each side.

LL: Never mind the smoke hanging heavy in the air, the huge fires burning kilometres away. It is dinner time and that means one thing—those on the frontlines need to be fed. Here in the kitchen of the Royal Canadian Legion in Ashcroft—Branch 113—they're dishing out today's meal.

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This supper tonight we have macaroni and cheese with meat and tomato and then we have hamburger and rice. We send buns with it and dessert.

LL: Pat Kilt is at the head of the line.

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We've been doing this since Saturday, so been pretty busy.

LL: The Legion started prepping food for the community when the wildfires took out power to part of the town. And when they found out that crews working on the hydro lines weren’t getting meals, they decided to feed them too.

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They don't stop working. They work right through in order to make sure they get everything done because it's so much fire around here that they have to keep going.

LL: The Legion hall is stuffed with food supplies, showcasing the generosity of the 1,600 or so people who live in this village on the banks of the Thompson River. Ashcroft was founded in the 1860s during the Cariboo gold rush. People here have known good times and bad times for generations. So they know how to support each other, especially when things go very wrong.

[Sound: Car door shut]

LL: It's up to George Cook and Darrell Smith to drive the food across the river where workers are replacing power poles. And police are watching closely, protecting what little is left.

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LL: So you're running this operation, more or less. Why did you want to do this?

VOICE 1: Well, it's not why we want to do it. We feel we have to do this. We can't expect people to come into the area to do all our work force and not pay back some way. Every one of these poles was down. So these guys are putting in long days and it’s just something we feel that we have to do.

LL: Just over a week ago, the fire—fueled by winds and sagebrush—reached the riverbank but not the village. Instead, it was the Ashcroft Indian Reserve that was devastated by flame. Little is left standing.

VOICE 1: Once we get around the corner here, there's not too much left up here.

LL: So not as far down as across the river from Ashcroft.

VOICE 1: It is just right on the riverbank just along the bottom here.

LL: Even the rocks are black.

VOICE 1: Even the rocks are black.

LL: What do you remember seeing that night when the fire came down the river bank?

VOICE 1: Well, a lot of the town went up to the top of that hill there. And then you can see right across. We could see the flames going up the hill bank. All that area in there, you can see the flames just shooting up. Here's the first of the houses that are all.

LL: There’s houses right down to the studs there.

VOICE 1: Right down. There’s our first crew there.

VOICE 2: You guys wanting some food? Want some food?

VOICE 1: Do I want some food? We’re moving over to the next spot.

VOICE 2: Okay. We’ll meet you up top.

LL: How long, George, have you lived in this area?

GEORGE COOK: I’ve lived here since ’84.

LL: How many times have you lived through fire?

GEORGE COOK: This is the second big one. Nothing like this. I've seen small areas burnt. But this area here, I've never seen anything like that.

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VOICE 1: Suppertime.

VOICE 2: Sorry?

VOICE 1: Anybody want dinner?

VOICE 2: Oh, uh—yeah, sure.

VOICE 1: Sure? Okay, we’ll pull over here.

VOICE 1: We found crews up here on the third day that hadn’t eaten for two days. They didn't want to leave their jobs. These guys were just amazing, just watching them go up and down these poles. And like the fellow said, there was a crew of four. They shared a small pizza. That's all they had for two days.

SOUNDCLIP

Okay, thanks guys. Thank you very much.

LL: There seems to be some deal of consensus around the fact that this is just going to get worse. That climate change is upon us and there's going to be more and more fires.

VOICE 1: I try not to think about that. You don't want to think about things getting worse. You always want to think of things getting better.

VOICE 2: I'm glad I’m not going to be around in 50 years from now to see what it’s going to be like. That's my opinion.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Want some suppers dropped off?

VOICE 2: I think we can go for something like that. Yeah.

VOICE 1: Okay.

[Sound: Car door slam]

VOICE 1: I guess if there's any good thing that came out of this fire is all our electrical system’s been upgraded .

LL: I thought you were going to tell me something like the town came together. [laughs]

VOICE 1: The town always comes together.

VOICE 2: It’s like any little town. Everybody pitches in when a disaster. Earlier we had the disaster in Cache Creek with the flood, right? We lost our chief fireman. Everybody came together then and everybody is coming together now.

LL: When we return from the meal run, we spot the local fire hall. A small group of men is gathered beside the fire truck looking weary. Jonah Anstett has been a volunteer firefighter for 16 years. He is exhausted by the events of the last week and he looks it. 2017 has been a tough year. In May, Jonah was there when they found the body of the local fire chief who drowned during floods that ravaged the region. Now there's fire.

JONAH ANSTETT: I've been doing this for 16 years and this has probably been one of the most difficult times I've ever gone through being a volunteer fireman.

LL: Have you fought forest fires before?

JONAH ANSTETT: I was in Lillooet in 2009 and we did Venables Valley out here in Ashcroft in 2003. So I've had my experience on wildfires before.

LL: And how does this one compare to the ones you fought in the past?

JONAH ANSTETT: No comparison. That destruction and the weather has just been so much more than any of the other ones we've ever had.

LL: What about the weather?

JONAH ANSTETT: Just the winds. The winds have been nonstop, relentless. They've been really aggressive and it's just been, it's been rough. It's hard seeing the people you love around you and that, going through these hard times and losing everything.

LL: That puts a lot more difficulty on top of what is already a fantastically difficult job trying to put out flames. Tell me about what extra that adds to it, when you're dealing with people who you know so well.

JONAH ANSTETT: The emotion is just so much more because they're not just addresses. They're not just numbers and that. These are people that we know and we've known for years. I grew up with a lot of these people out here, like a lot of the people that lost their homes were school friends that I grew up with in school and that. And I remember going to their homes when I was a kid for birthday parties and stuff like that and seeing it reduced to rubble, it's hard. It's hard. It's hard to watch the people you love lose it all and kind of don't know where to go from here. It's getting to be emotional. It's getting to be on top.

LL: What are they saying to you?

JONAH ANSTETT: I haven't really talked to anybody as we've been going nonstop. A lot of our guys have been doing anywhere from 12 to 18 hour days and that for the last week now. And we don't even have time to rest, let alone to think about what else is happening with everybody else.

LL: Let me get this straight. You're a volunteer.

JONAH ANSTETT: Sixteen years as a volunteer. Yeah.

LL: Why?

JONAH ANSTETT: Because I love my community and I love the people in it. And I’d do it for anybody. And I’d do it for any one of my guys in the department.

LL: You are trying to protect people's homes. You're not trying to stop the forest fire. Your job here is to try to protect people's homes from burning down.

JONAH ANSTETT: We’re protecting homes. We’re taking hot spots. We’re trying to take the pressure off of the other groups in the area and that. We’re just trying to do our part. We're all one family out here. It's all a big family. Everybody is always been like—through everything that we've gone through over the years, the one thing that makes this small town great is that everybody comes together at the end of it all.

LL: How long have you lived here?

JONAH ANSTETT: I'm a born and raised hometown boy. I was born at the hospital in this town and I've lived here my entire life. I've moved out of town and lived in other places. But this is home.

LL: How much sleep have you had in the last week?

JONAH ANSTETT: Probably running on—a lot of our guys are running on anywhere from two to four to six hours of sleep a night, if that. And going home at night, it's hard to sleep because you're thinking about everything that everybody's lost and it's hard to wind down after that. That's when the emotional time hits. That's when the tears come. It's hard. It's not easy watching the people you love hurt.

LL: We have one last place to go. Down by the banks of the river, we're told to visit a camp site where some of the 76 people who were forced to flee the reserve are now living. They are a tight knit group now trying to cope with the fallout. Angie Thorne, her husband Randy, her granddaughter and their dog, Militia have set up not only their RV but also a rough-hewn meeting spot where people can gather, eat and talk.

LL: I just wanted to talk to you about what you remember the night that the fire came in.

ANGIE THORNE: At about 11 o'clock, I guess it was, we went and got some gas. I had already was witnessing the big winds and the big black smoke already coming. So I got to my yard and I already had friends and family that were already there to help me load up stuff. I don't know exactly how long we had—I know it wasn't very long—that we had to get our stuff out. Only thing I could think of was my safe and clothes. We didn't have an evacuation alert. We had no time to respond.

LL: You just were told to go.

ANGIE THORNE: We weren’t even told to go actually. We just left. Flames were coming up by. My window was rolled down. I went up for my second trip to make sure that he was coming out and as I drove back up to my place, we could feel the heat already from the fire coming closer and closer, edging. And it was quick too. It wasn't a slow roll of a fire. It was blowing. It would catch the tops and then just keep going.

LL: Did you see your house burn down?

ANGIE THORNE: Yes, I did. When we got out initially, we were helping the RCMP block traffic from [unintelligible] and we drove up onto the sand pit across the river up higher. There's quite a few of us who were standing up there. And by the time we got up there, my house was already engulfed.

LL: What was that like, watching your house burn?

ANGIE THORNE: It was very upsetting. It was very, very upsetting. We were there for 21 plus years and we have many family events there and just raising our granddaughter. We raised our children there. We raised our granddaughter. And we have custody of her, so everything that was in our yard was for her. She had a pool. She had a trampoline. She had a swing set. It was pretty upsetting. My husband's been our rock for us. He's been the strongest one for us.

LL: You seem pretty strong.

ANGIE THORNE: I have my good days and bad days. My niece who I helped raise, she had said to me the other day. She'd come to see me and she said, “Auntie,” she said, “You can make any place feel like home.” Here we are in a tent and friends of ours and his employer lent us a little fridge. The overwhelming support that we've been getting from the community of Ashcroft. We’re well known here. We've been here our entire lives, born and raised. And many of us have school friends that have supported us. One of them is pulling in right now. Her and I have known each other since we were about six years old. We went to school at Cache Creek Elementary School.

LL: There were other things we wanted to ask you about. We actually managed to get out with these guys who are feeding people, who are putting poles back up. So we drove by and among the things, the devastation we saw up there, was the cemetery just in ashes. And I know how important cemeteries are to communities. I’m wondering how that feels in addition to losing homes.

ANGIE THORNE: We have family members. Many of our loved ones, many some of which I was raised with, we're just going to have to go by memory of where they were placed. I did see some pictures on Facebook of that. I didn't necessarily go onto the reserve into individual homes. I just went to my place.

LL: What is left where your house used to be?

ANGIE THORNE: All I have is a picnic table that my sons built from about 15 years ago and that survived, along with half of our pool. It just kind of melted down and the water was still sitting there. And my granddaughter's trampoline was melted and her swing set’s [unintelligible]. And our horseshoes. We got our horseshoes. Since then, the great people of the fire department had picked up my picnic table and brought her to one of their yards for safekeeping while they do their clean up. And they also picked up my horseshoes so we can play horseshoes in the campsite here.

LL: How long do you think you’re going to be here?

ANGIE THORNE: As long as my father lives next door to me. I need him to feel like he has a place to go because his house is also burnt. So I probably won't stray too far away from my dad. And my mom and my other brother and I have sons who have been displaced. So if we make an area or a place where they could go, then we'll stay as long as we have to. We've since been joined by residents of Loon Lake area, a few from Cache Creek that have been misplaced. Each time one of them have pulled in, they have their own stories to tell, many of them just as frightening as ours. I just want to share what I have with them, open up our area because these lots are very big.

LL: It's such a close community that I then ask Angie whether she might know Jonah Anstett, the volunteer firefighter who was so upset when he couldn't save her home or others on the reserve.

ANGIE THORNE: Oh, we know everybody here.

LL: Jonah told us he used to play in some of the houses in your community, right?

ANGIE THORNE: Probably mine. Yes. They played hockey together, him and my sons.

LLL I just want to say Jonah though, when we were talking to him, was very near tears talking about how much it broke his heart to not to be able to save homes like yours. And I wonder what you could say to Jonah if he was sitting here now.

ANGIE THORNE: I love him. I tell him that every time I see him. We always hug each other and whether it be in the arena—because he’s a ref too.

LL: I think he feels like he let you down.

ANGIE THORNE: No. Not for one second. I had another message from my friend. He said, “Sorry. We tried.” That was his only message. And I said you know what, we're all okay. We're all safe. So don't feel bad. We’re okay.

LL: What's on display here in Ashcroft isn't just ash and blackened ground. It's also the spirit of a community that's been bent but not broken. They've been tested by this crucible of fire and there will be more tests to come. It will take months and millions of dollars to rebuild and the fires aren't out yet, meaning they'll need to lean on each other for a long time to come.

[Music: Bridge]

LL: To see photographs of the people you just heard, go to our website, www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. And if you missed it, you can listen to yesterday's special edition of The Current from here in Kamloops. You'll find that on our website and podcast, as well as the CBC Radio app. And if you have a story to share about the BC wildfires or a comment about today's program, go to our website and click on contact. Now the CBC News is next. Then firefighters in BC are working around the clock to beat back the flames and contain the destruction.

SOUNDCLIP

We have potential for another firestorm if the winds come up again. I've got three fires that surround my district. The trees are candling. Fire blows really hard. It sounds like a freight train coming at you and it's pretty scary.

LL: Stan McCarthy—fire chief for the evacuated community of 150 Mile House—started the local volunteer fire department decades ago after suffering his own loss to fire. Now he's at the forefront of today's fight and he'll pause just long enough to take our call. And after a rash of evacuations, some promising news for the residents of Cache Creek—the first forced to leave their homes and the first to get word they can now go home.

SOUNDCLIP

We're anticipating roughly 300 vehicles returning to the community. Everybody in Cache Creek wants to get home desperately. We understand that. That's part of the reason the order is being lifted. They're telling me they want to get back home.

LL: The unabashed mayor of Cache Creek on our next half hour. I'm Laura Lynch. You're listening to a special edition of The Current covering the wildfires from Kamloops.

'Neighbour helps neighbour': volunteer firefighters battle to protect B.C. homes

Guests: Stan McCarthy

LL: Hello, I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to a special edition of The Current covering the wildfires from Kamloops, BC.

[Music: Theme]

LL: Up next, no end in sight. The harsh reality for BC firefighters right now and yet they fight on and on.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: It's our job. We offer our help wherever it's needed, so either it’s here in New Brunswick or right now British Columbia is more desperate than we are. So that's why we’re going over.

VOICE 2: I guess we’re going to be working long days and lugging a lot of hose around and doing whatever they need us to do.

VOICE 3: There's always some dangers associated with forest fires, but I'm pretty confident that the training we received and that we have experienced, and we're in the hands of very good people, professionals that have a lot of experience, lots of knowledge.

LL: Firefighters from New Brunswick on their way west to help battle the wildfires here in central BC and they'll be joining crews from several other provinces. Boy, will they ever be a welcome sight for the battle-weary firefighters here. It's been an around-the-clock struggle to contain the flames going on for two weeks now with truly no end in sight. Fire chief Stan McCarthy is on the frontlines of the fight in his community of 150 Mile House. The small town about 15 kilometres south of Williams Lake is under an evacuation order. And so far thanks to Chief McCarthy and his crew, just five residences and four shops have been lost to flames. We have reached Stan McCarthy at the fire hall in 150 Mile House. Hello.

STAN MCCARTHY: Hello.

LL: Tell me what your crews are doing right now.

STAN MCCARTHY: Right now we're monitoring our area really hard because we had a fire storm, another fire storm come through here on Saturday afternoon. And we thought we were going to lose a bunch of residences, but when I got up and did my patrol at five o'clock in the morning, we didn't lose any more residences.

LL: What you're trying to do at this point is protect what remaining houses and businesses there are.

STAN MCCARTHY: Yes. We have some fairly large residences here and Spectra Energy here and we've been really watching Spectra Energy, our natural gas people.

LL: How many crews have you got out fighting fires right now?

STAN MCCARTHY: Personnel?

LL: Yeah.

STAN MCCARTHY: I've got between—I think I got up to 125 as of this morning. They're working two 12-hour shifts. We start six in the morning, six at night. We run two shifts, two 12-hour shifts.

LL: Holy cow.

STAN MCCARTHY: So we're doing 24/7.

LL: How many days have you been doing that for?

STAN MCCARTHY: Since—I'm losing track of days. We started on the 7^th, the Friday night of the 7^th, I think it was.

LL: So tell me something then. What kind of shape are your crews in?

STAN MCCARTHY: Some of my crew right now are getting exhausted so the pressure crews that come in from out of town are trying to give the original crews a break. I've had a couple of crews from Enderby and Lumby. They were the first ones here to help us. They were here a week and they sent the first teams home and sent up the second teams for us.

LL: What are the biggest challenges they're facing right now?

STAN MCCARTHY: Well, we're all a little bit nervous about the weather because on Thursday, again we're expecting high winds and lightning storms again and we have potential for another fire storm if the winds come up again. So actually right around my area, I've got three fires that surround my fire district.

LL: When you use the word fire storm, what does that mean? Can you describe that for me?

STAN MCCARTHY: [Chuckles] The trees are candling. The fire blows really hard. It sounds like a freight train coming at you and it's pretty scary.

LL: And when you say the trains are candling, I've seen that before. That's when the flames are going from treetop to treetop.

STAN MCCARTHY: Yeah. They're just blowing along top of the trees and it’s the same as that.

LL: Overall though, how do these wildfires compare with ones you've seen over the years?

STAN MCCARTHY: It's the same. So it will be the same as what happened in Fort McMurray and the same what happened in Kelowna. Everybody knew what Fort McMurray looked like because it was on the television so much. This looks exactly the same.

LL: I remember when the fire chief in Fort McMurray was interviewed and he was in tears about what had happened to his community. Now I know that the destruction hasn't been nearly as bad where you are, but I wonder what effect that has on you to have seen part of 150 Mile House destroyed.

STAN MCCARTHY: Well, it's pretty emotional because I'm one of the founding members of this fire department. I've been here—this is my 37th year. And originally when we started the fire department, my house had burned down before we had a fire department and I got involved with a community to take it to a referendum to get it into a volunteer fire department. So I've been involved since day one. So it's very emotional for me. And I worked up my way through the ranks from being a grunt, as a firefighter, up to deputy chief and then to fire chief.

LL: You're actually sounding very tired.

STAN MCCARTHY: [Laughs] I am very tired. I think I've got about—last night I actually got some sleep. I got about four hours last night so actually I'm a little bit better today. But the smoke starting to get all— everybody—there's so much smoke here. I think we're losing our voices because of the smoke.

LL: You mean your voice doesn't always sound like that?

STAN MCCARTHY: No. [Laughs] No, not always. Just a little bit tired.

LL: There is a suggestion that it's going to stay like this for the rest of the summer.

STAN MCCARTHY: Yes.

LL: What are you going to do?

STAN MCCARTHY: I was on holidays when this originally started and I knew it was coming. So I was out fishing in [unintelligible] on the [unintelligible] River and I was hoping to go back fishing. [laughs] But I might not be able to get there.

LL: No, seriously though. I mean honestly, how can you sustain that level of intensity and activity for weeks and weeks?

STAN MCCARTHY: Well, alls you got to do is keep putting one foot in front of the other and carry on because it's not going away. So you just got to trust your crew. I've got a very well-trained crew and I have got some excellent help here—help from the fire commissioner's office, help from the Cariboo Regional District, help from the Forest Service. I've got lots of volunteers, lots of our old members come back to help. Our community has really pulled together.

LL: Have you got the equipment that you need?

STAN MCCARTHY: Because our area does not have fire hydrants, we don't have a water system so we have to pack all our water everywhere we go, either from water tenders or port-a-tanks and stuff like that. So we have a bit of a water issue but we're managing to keep up. We have a construction crew on Highway 97 that’s doing a bunch of construction work. [unintelligible] is there. I went and got two water tenders from there. They hold 5,000 gallons each which is really nice of them. And then we've got water tenders coming from other parts of the province.

LL: Have you been out close to the fire lines yourself?

STAN MCCARTHY: Yes. [chuckles] I let my team run the command. I become more of like a safety officer on roving command, so I've been all over the place. So I've been right there every day. Yep.

LL: Tell me about the most frightening moment you've had out there on the lines.

STAN MCCARTHY: That would have been—the first night was really, really trying because we didn't know if we were able to stop this fire. And because of the intensity it came and how fast it came, we knew we couldn't stop it when it came up the hill from Williams Lake. So we came back to the hall and made a plan and then we went back and thought well, if it comes here we might be able to stop it there and we stopped it on what we call Horsefly Road so it didn't get into our main community, our main subdivisions. We were really lucky to get it stopped there.

LL: What made that moment so frightening for you?

STAN MCCARTHY: I thought we were going to lose our whole community. I thought we were going to lose every residence here. I thought we were. I didn't think we would slow it down. And then we had another one on Saturday afternoon and I thought—on Sunday morning when I got up I thought that wouldn't be there. When I drove up there early Sunday morning, we didn't lose one residence. I was quite pleased.

LL: Have you at any point been worried about people losing their lives? And by that, I mean also your firefighters?

STAN MCCARTHY: Yes. We were quite concerned there on this last fire storm because we had people in the danger area. So what we did, we called on them to retreat and just hope that we had put in the proper fire lines and sprinkler protection units had done their job and they stopped those houses burning.

LL: What is it about you and your crews that make you want to do this? It is so tough and it is so risky.

STAN MCCARTHY: It’s being part of the community and we're there to help our community. I mean we just don't quit if somebody needs a hand. This Cariboo country, it’s neighbour helps neighbour.

LL: It's got to be more than that though. I mean given everything you're putting on the line.

STAN MCCARTHY: Oh, I just think it takes a special brand of people to be a firefighter and a volunteer firefighter. We don't get paid for our regular duties as firemen. We'll get paid from that province now because there’s a provincial emergency which will really help because these guys are away from their families. They’re away from their jobs. They lost wages. Our power was out. We’ve been on an evacuation notice ever since it started. So the power has been out for a while and people lost things in their home like their groceries. It's quite costly to our firefighters. You talk about the guys but you've got women on the line too, right?

STAN MCCARTHY: Oh, you bet. I have the best crew there is. I really do. My female firefighters, I'd go anywhere with them. They do an excellent job. That's one thing I have to say. My crew, I just can't say how much I appreciate them, as their training and their experiences.

LL: Chief McCarthy, take good care of yourself and thanks for speaking to us.

STAN MCCARTHY: Okay. Have a great day.

LL: Bye-bye.

STAN MCCARTHY: Bye-bye.

LL: Fire Chief Stan McCarthy spoke with us from the fire hall at 150 Mile House. Now just south of there is the community of 100 Mile House. It too was evacuated. Many left, but they tried to stay close to home only to be chased by shifting winds and volatile wildfires, and told a second or even a third time that they had to move on again. That's what happened to this couple who were outside the evacuation centre here in Kamloops. And with all the upheaval in their lives, they wanted to let the firefighters know that their hard work is appreciated.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: My name is Matt Bryant from 100 Mile House, British Columbia.

VOICE 2: And I’m Jennifer from 100 Mile House.

VOICE 1: So right now we're safe. We've seen some flames but generally it's really smoky. You're seeing smoke coming up in different areas of the mountains. I probably if I sat there and counted, there was at least 30, 40 different areas I seen smoke coming up. One area was a big, big plume of smoke coming up. We have a lot of smoke and ash falling out the sky. Actually, my pick up last night was absolutely covered in ash and everything around it covered in ash. And as we're standing there talking, our heads are covered in ash.

VOICE 2: It happened very fast. i was at my daughter's house and they knocked on the door and you had to like leave immediately, like just go. So we just loaded her kids up and we raced along is what we did.

VOICE 1: We grabbed what we could grab and we got out of there.

VOICE 2: Just passports.

VOICE 1: Necessities of living for now and personal belongings, mementos. My dad passed away a few years ago. I grabbed some stuff that I inherited from him and basically we packed up our truck to our trailer and that's what we're staying, living in out of right now, in a kind of in a field at my wife's parents’.

VOICE 2: We have my daughter and her husband and her children, and then my other daughter with her husband and baby are here.

VOICE 1: For all the volunteers and the fire crew that are working hard to look after the places that we live, we take our hats off to them because they also have families and they're working hard. Everybody. And I seen some firefighters yesterday at the Husky station and they were literally black from head to toe, covered in sweat. These guys are all busting their humps to keep us safe. And sorry. I tell you, you generally hear bad stuff in the world. Bombings and shootings and whatever have you. And then you see people all come together in a situation like this to look after us all and keep us safe. We thank everybody that's doing this for us. It's really tough because fires are unpredictable. They're a beast and we've got to hope we have a home when we come back. All I can say is everyone take care of themselves.

[Music: Bridge]

Cache Creek, B.C., residents — forced out by wildfire — now set to return home

Guests: John Ranta

LL: I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to a special edition of The Current on CBC Radio One covering the wildfires from Kamloops, BC. We've been hearing the anxiety and frustration of evacuees from across BC’s interior, but finally hope for a few. They were the first residents ordered to leave their homes when the fire crept too close 11 days ago. The people of Cache Creek left their homes behind. After a week, they began getting restless, even as there were suggestions that the fire and evacuation alerts could remain in place all summer.

SOUNDCLIP

I just don't understand for a town of 1,200 people and they just focus on, sadly Boston Flats. That place is flattened. Nobody is going home there. There’s 1,200 people waiting to get home here and find out what's going on. There's been people through the town nonstop. I mean the garbage truck was out yesterday picking up garbage. There's been a mail truck going to the post office a few times. Cache Creek is full of alive people that need to come home.

LL: Today—good news. They are being allowed to go home even as the fires around them are still burning and still out of control. John Ranta is the mayor of Cache Creek. He stayed behind when the people left and he is looking forward to welcoming them back to the place he calls home. Mayor Ranta, the decision has been made to allow your residents back. Why?

JOHN RANTA: Well, that's good news. And the Thompson-Nicola Regional District makes that decision based on consultation with the wildfire management branch, the RCMP, Emergency Management BC, in order to assess the threat. And the assessed threat seems to have diminished to the extent that people will be safe going back to the community. However, it’s not as if the threat is entirely gone. There is always the possibility with a downgrade from an evacuation order to an evacuation alert, that the order may be reinstated at some point in the future. So people still need to be prepared to leave their homes if called upon to do so.

LL: How many people had actually left the community with the order?

JOHN RANTA: Well, there's roughly a thousand people live in Cache Creek and probably 900 of them left, I would estimate. The volunteer fire department remained home and they do 24-hour monitoring of hotspots in the community. There's a number of RCMP. People that are from as far away as Alberta and Saskatchewan are in Cache Creek helping to ensure the security of homes that have been evacuated. And we've got at least 260 people in the fire camp which is located at the elementary school playground with 150 or 200 tents and a kitchen facility and three or four trailers that have offices in them for the firefighting senior management. And it's just a small village that has sprung up in the elementary school soccer field.

LL: Of those people, are they all willing to come back, even under the proviso that they may just have to pack up and leave again?

JOHN RANTA: That remains to be seen. We're anticipating roughly 300 vehicles returning to the community. Everybody in Cache Creek wants to get home desperately. We understand that. That's part of the reason the order is being lifted.

LL: What is it like there in the community now? You've been staying there when everyone else left. Correct?

JOHN RANTA: Correct.

LL: What is it like there?

JOHN RANTA: It's deserted. It's lonely. My wife is here in Kamloops. She left on our anniversary. I had plans.

LL: Is she coming back?

JOHN RANTA: She'll be coming back at three o'clock. I'm optimistic about that.

LL: Mayor, it's been a tough year for this region and for you too, I understand, because with the floods came tragedy that touched even your life. Can you tell me about that?

JOHN RANTA: Well, Clayton Cassidy was the fire chief in Cache Creek. We had a flood in May and that unfortunately swept him away. As life was lost, had a huge funeral service in the village of Cache Creek with hundreds of volunteer firefighters and professional firefighters from around the province and beyond attending that ceremony. It's the biggest funeral I've ever been at in my life and it was a fitting tribute to Clayton. However, the loss of Clayton Cassidy who was such a valued volunteer in the community in so many ways, it's something that the community members who knew him will live with for the rest of our lives.

LL: And he was a friend of yours, correct?

JOHN RANTA: Absolutely. I’m very sad about it. I'm sad for his wife. I'm sad for his three boys. The whole community is sad. The whole community depended on his support when there was an emergency and he was so calm and methodical in approaching any disaster. He received a good citizenship medal from the province of British Columbia as one of the first recipients of that medal. But he will be missed by everybody in the community unquestionably.

LL: So you go from that tragedy and floods and high waters, to this fire and smoke and people being displaced. What kind of impact does that have on people in the area and on you too?

JOHN RANTA: Well, don't worry about me. I ran for office and I'm happy to serve. I'm honoured to serve the fine people in the village of Cache Creek. They've demonstrated their resilience time and again during disasters such as this. And I'm sure this is another opportunity for the community to grow stronger as a result of the disaster we're facing. And next time you're in Cache Creek, be sure to drop by. Free coffee at the mayor's office for all takers.

LL: Is there ever a time though, when you think maybe it's time to consider leaving? I mean you did grow up in Vancouver and then you moved up to this part of the province. And there's just a whole lot of trouble going on. Do you ever think that it's time to go?

JOHN RANTA: Not even for a heartbeat do I think is it time to go. When I came from Vancouver where people are anonymous, where nobody knows their neighbours and moved to Cache Creek and had the people of that community embrace me as one of their own, eventually elect me as the mayor, I couldn't be more honoured than to be part of that community. And it never has even remotely crossed my mind that I would consider leaving Cache Creek.

LL: What do you want to see done though to improve the situation that you face with these seemingly increasing rates of natural challenges, natural disasters?

JOHN RANTA: Well, we're doing an assessment to ensure that any flood threat that is possible to be addressed is being addressed. We got funding from the provincial government to do that assessment. As far as wildfires go, they're sort of unpredictable but I think they're probably in a similar category as the flood threat. When you have a flood like we did in 2015, it takes out a lot of the debris that accumulates and whatnot. So there's a diminished threat of flood like the debris coming down and blocking culverts. The same thing with a wildfire. When you burn off the available fuels in the forest floor, in the grasslands, then you're probably fairly safe for a few years.

LL: And I just want you to talk to me about the firefighters who've been trying to protect your community. Have you been talking to them?

JOHN RANTA: I go every day for a briefing from the wildfire management branch. Reg Trap, who's the incident commander down there, has all his senior personnel sitting around during a briefing. And every time I'm asked to say something, I start off with thanking the firefighters for putting their lives at risk to fight the fire that's threatening the communities in the interior. And you know, it's just a magnificent job they're doing. There's eight pieces of heavy equipment, 13 helicopters, over 260 firefighters and everybody is working without complaint, selflessly to protect the community and those in it.

LL: Have you seen the firefighters? How are they physically? It just seems like they must be exhausted.

JOHN RANTA: You know they should all enter an opportunity to have a firefighters’ calendar prepared because they're all magnificent men and women who would probably make a million dollars if they put together a firefighters’ calendar. They're in great shape. They're used to mountain-goating up and down the hills in the area and they do a great job for us.

LL: Mayor, thank you very much.

JOHN RANTA: It's my pleasure.

LL: John Ranta is the mayor of Cache Creek. The evacuation order is scheduled to be lifted this afternoon.

September 1, 2017 episode transcript

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