Natasha Shoemaker couldn’t believe how quickly the flames spread near Golden, B.C., Wednesday night.
She manages a few properties in the area and was called out to check on one of them as the Dogtooth Forest Service Road wildfire exploded in size.
No evacuation alerts or orders were in place at the time, so Shoemaker and a colleague made their way south to the property. She told CTV News a few spot fires quickly turned into a mountain full of flames.
“As we were driving out, the smoke became super thick and hot,” she said Friday via Zoom.
“In the 20 minutes we were there, we watched the fire spread down the entire valley. I’ve never seen fire like that.”
On their way back to town on Highway 95, they saw the Canadian Timberframes building engulfed in flames.
“We stopped there because I noticed a horse in the field that was really close to the fire and the fire had jumped across (the Columbia River) and there were spot fires everywhere,” Shoemaker said.
“We opened some gates and we tied them open and we tried our best to shoo the horse out. It wasn’t going. It was spooked. And the fire trucks were there and yelling at us. ‘You need to evacuate. You need to leave.’ All I can think of now coming out of that is how thick that smoke was and how hot the fire was. It was just a being of its own.”
Shoemaker later realized that the horse she was trying to rescue belonged to a friend of hers, who confirmed the animal made it out of the fire zone safely and had been relocated to Invermere.
As many as six homes, as well as other structures, were damaged as the fire advanced on Wednesday.
By Thursday, it had grown to more than 5,400 hectares. It remained roughly that size on Saturday morning, according to the BC Wildfire Service, which said no significant growth was recorded on Friday.
Shoemaker has lived in Golden for nine years and said while she’s experienced wildfires before, this one felt different.
“We’ve definitely all been in situations, in Golden, where there’s been fires in the area and we’re wondering, ‘Do we have to be ready to go?'” she said.
“This was something else entirely.”