Among the wildfire evacuees in Prince George, Rick Gillingham is simply known as "The Mayor."
Whether it's to lend a family one of his travel trailers to give them a roof over their heads in the evacuee parking lot or making his daily rounds to bring water to the dozens of displaced Central Interior residents still camped out in the city, Gillingham is making sure their needs are being met.
Gillingham didn't win any civic election but if he ever runs for office, he's certainly got Mike Kubilius's vote. Kubilius has been stuck in his camper for six weeks, ever since he was forced out of his home at Spokin Lake, 47 kilometres east of Williams Lake, and he can't thank Gillingham enough for all he's done.
"Rick has been coming around here two or three times a day ever since I've been here, making sure everything is awesome, he's just a normal dude who wants to help," Kubilius said. "People are showing up and things are broken on their camper and he's right there helping them. He'll stay there until two in the morning until it's fixed. This guy is fantastic. He's so big-hearted."
Gillingham built Kubilius a step for his dog to help her get into the trailer and a wood enclosure for her to sleep in. He also brought a plastic kiddie pool to the lot and filled it up for the pets to cool off in.
Paul Chrena of Spokin Lake was sleeping in his van with his girlfriend Donna in the College of New Caledonia parking lot when Gillingham asked if they wanted to use his camper for as long as they needed it. Gillingham also lent his 28-foot travel trailer to a family from Williams Lake and they lived in it for nearly a month before they went back home. He's offered people a room in his South Fort George home to give them a break from the evacuee camps in the city that are still home to dozens of people.
"The situation at CNC in my opinion was getting a bit desperate, people were camped out in tents that were too small and they were cramming themselves in," Gillingham said.
The 61-year-old retired truck driver and his girlfriend Charlaine MacGillivray realized people in their campers needed to replenish their water supplies and took it upon themselves to borrow a large cube water container from Interior Warehousing and took up an offer from Central Builders Home Hardware to hook up the plumbing to the tank so they could easily distribute the water to the evacuees using his pickup truck.
"It's got to be hard when you're away from home and you're scared and you don't know if your house is still going to be standing and if you can help ease their mind a little bit it makes a world of difference," MacGillivray said.
"You never know when it could be you that gets evacuated. You really see the true heart of the people when something like this happens, you see the people who really care and want to make a difference. People always focus on the bad in Prince George and it's really cool to see everybody pull together to help somebody else, and it's not over. People can't go home yet. There are still people in little pockets like the casino who are still evacuated and I don't think people realize they're still here. They still need people to say 'Do you need anything?'"
Gillingham is originally from Gander, Nfld., and his relatives back east have firsthand experience dealing with distraught people unable to return to their homes. When the planes were grounded after the 9/11 terrorist attacks of 2001, they opened up their homes to lodge stranded travelers when there were not early enough hotel rooms to deal with the crush.
"I've never met them in my life, but I thought, if they can do it, I can do it," said Gillingham. "We did open our house but nobody took up the offers."
At the height of the wildfire crisis, the city was hosting nearly 10,000 evacuees in hotels rooms, billet homes or at designated parking lot campsites. Most returned to their homes when the 100 Mile House and Williams Lake evacuation orders were lifted.
Chrena left his Spokin Lake-area home on July 15 after the second warning from the police to evacuate and he's glad he's in Prince George, with the exception of days like last Saturday, because he's largely been spared the choking smoke that has plagued the southern parts of the province. He and his girlfriend originally planned to stay with a friend in Horsefly but he said he couldn't even see the town for all the smoke.
"Fire doesn't scare me but that smoke made me sick two days before we left," Chrena said. "The smoke was the reason we left. The fire was getting bigger and bigger when we left. When the houses started burning we saw it by the colour of the smoke. When the smoke is gray, that's when the bush is burning, but when it's heavy black, that was the roof of a house burning."
The Spokin Lake evacuation order was downgraded to an alert on Wednesday with crews starting to penetrate the fire and Kubilius is allowed to go back but the 51-year-old former computer store owner is in no hurry to return. He spoke to one of his neighbours who stayed behind to protect a herd of livestock and was told the smoke situation was worse than ever, with the Hanceville Riske Creek fire, the largest in the province, just 60 kilometres to the west. Kubilius went back for his motorcycle two weeks ago and saw the devastating effects of the fire on the once-healthy forest along the way.
"The smoke is so thick there and I'm not going back, there's no point," said Kubilius. "It's all political now and it comes down to the mighty dollar right now. They want us to go back but it's not healthy.
"This thing could burn until winter underneath with the root systems smouldering. I give kudos to the guys out there fighting it, I don't know how they can do it, breathing in that smoke constantly."
Kubilius saw the first Williams Lake-area fire not long after it was started by a lightning strike near Spokin Lake on Friday, July 7. The RCMP came by that day to warn him and his mother to gather up their belongings and prepare to leave. The next day he left with their truck and travel trailer, dog and cat and tried to get to Williams Lake on Spokin Lake Road but was turned back by a roadblock.
With the power out at their home, their food supply rotting, his gas tank less than one-quarter full and no communication with the outside world other than cell phone texts, he and his mom tried two more times to leave but were told the fire was too close to the road. That Saturday they tried a different route on Beaver Valley Lake Road heading towards Horsefly and got 23 kilometres up the road when they ran into the frightening scene of fires burning up a slope not far from the road. The truck developed an electrical issue traveling on the washboard road and stalled, adding to their panic, and when they opened the door his cat Mikey bolted and was not seen again.
Kubilius's mom got into another car and left while he worked on the truck. He changed a fuse and finally got it started and turned around and spent two more days in his house before he decided to try to leave again. That night he got back in his truck, blew past two roadblocks and made it to Highway 97 at 150 Mile House, driving through the night to get to Prince George.
"I wasn't stopping for anyone," said Kubilius. "When I got to Prince George on the pavement, I was good. I didn't have to worry about burning."
Kubilius registered at the evacuation centre at the CNC and camped there for four weeks until everybody was asked to move. He's been stationed at the parking lot west of the Aquatic Centre ever since.
In the six weeks he's been in Prince George, Kubilius has felt overwhelming generosity and kindness from strangers like Gillingham and MacGillivray who have responded to an emergency the likes of which the city has never seen. His 16-year-old dog Maggie hurt her knee jumping down from the camper to the parking lot and one of the city's veterinary clinics provided medical treatment and food free of charge.
"It was the locals, the people of P.G. who made the difference, they kept us all together," said Kubilius. "Every day, constantly, when all of us were here, at least 20 people a day were coming by asking if they could help us with anything. A lady brought me a pizza and then my glasses got busted and she took them for the day and brought them back, brand new."
With the B.C. Northern Exhibition on at Exhibition Park, close to where he's camped out, Kubilius has taken a temporary job as a ride operator at The Zipper. His ordeal the past six weeks has been one long roller-coaster ride.
"It's a big eye-opener how quickly you can go from thinking everything is great to losing everything," he said. "You see it on the news about other people being evacuated and losing everything in fires and you think, that's a shame, but you don't really think about it until it's you and then it's holy-moley, the feelings you go through."
