Five years after the Lytton Creek fire tore through the Village of Lytton, longtime resident and first-term mayor Denise O\u2019Connor expresses frustration about the slow pace of recovery but sees multiple signs of progress.<\/p>\n
On June 29, 2021, much of British Columbia was in the grip of a heat dome that saw temperature records shattered. On that day, Lytton recorded the highest temperature ever seen in Canada: 49.6 C.<\/p>\n
The next day, with temperatures falling to a comparatively mild 39 C, a fire \u2014 the cause of which has still not been officially determined \u2014 began in the late afternoon. Whipped by high winds, it engulfed the small town in a matter of minutes before spreading to the neighbouring Lytton First Nation (LFN) and surrounding electoral area.<\/p>\n
Residents fled with little more than the clothes on their backs. Two people were tragically killed when they sheltered on their property in Lytton; those who left were dispersed throughout the region.<\/p>\n
The scale of the disaster was not immediately apparent, but soon the grim reality became clear. Homes and properties were destroyed, and livestock and pets killed, in LFN and the regional district, but the Village of Lytton bore the brunt of the losses, with 90 per cent of the homes, businesses, and buildings in the town\u2019s downtown core \u2014 including the former elementary school, RCMP detachment, health site, ambulance station, museum, pool, Lytton Chinese Heritage museum, and municipal office \u2014 lost.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Connor\u2019s home on Fraser Street was one of the many houses destroyed, but she was able to move into the family home above the town, in an area that had been spared. From there she was able to watch the agonizingly long clean-up of the town, and the months of frustration as property owners dealt with an archaeological assessment process that was long, costly, and left more questions than answers.<\/p>\n
From the outside looking in, the lack of progress was baffling. There had been an initial round of optimism in the immediate aftermath of the fire, once people took stock, that Lytton could \u201cbuild back better.\u201d When no building, better or otherwise, seemed to be happening, O\u2019Connor \u2014 a retired teacher and principal with no local government experience \u2014 decided to run for mayor in the 2022 municipal election.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t understand how governments worked,\u201d she says now. \u201cI thought things could move quickly and rules could be bent. I thought that an unprecedented situation could have an unprecedented response, but there were still blue fences everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
Once she was inside government, O\u2019Connor says she began to realize that when legislation is set it has to be followed; there could be no bending of the rules to accommodate the unique situation Lytton found itself in. The province\u2019s legislation decreed that the local government needed to take the lead with rebuilding, even though Lytton had none of the resources, staff, capacity, or expertise to do that.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think back to shortly after the fire, when a number of us as residents reached out to say to the province \u2018What are you doing to help village council in Lytton?\u2019\u201d says O\u2019Connor. \u201cAnd the response was \u2018We are helping them.\u2019 The model was community-led recovery, which we didn\u2019t fully understand, and that was the legislation.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Office of the Auditor General in B.C. launched an investigation into the province\u2019s role in Lytton\u2019s recovery, and the report which came out in March 2026 was critical of Victoria\u2019s \u201chands off\u201d approach. It noted the need for changed legislation that would enable the province to step in following disasters such as what happened in Lytton, and made recommendations about what the province should do if it ever found itself in a similar situation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen the report came out one recommendation was for the province to assess the community to see if it had the capacity to lead its own recovery,\u201d says O\u2019Connor. \u201cWe cheered and said yes, that\u2019s exactly what they need to do, because we don\u2019t feel they did this.\u201d<\/p>\n
The auditor general\u2019s recommendations \u2014 nearly five years after the fire \u2014 came too late to help the town whose experience prompted the report and its recommendations in the first place.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d learned that when legislation is set it has to be followed, so things moved a lot slower than I ever anticipated they would,\u201d says O\u2019Connor. \u201cI believe that the work is a lot slower than what five years [after the fire] should look like.<\/p>\n
\u201cSaying that, though, until three years ago there was still a State of Local Emergency in place [it was lifted in June 2023]. When I look at what\u2019s been done in the last three years it looks a little bit better.\u201d<\/p>\n
Twenty homes have been rebuilt, meaning there are once again people living in downtown Lytton. The Lytton Chinese Heritage Museum was rebuilt by its owners, filled with more artifacts, and reopened in spring 2025, almost exactly eight years after the first museum opened.<\/p>\n
Lytton\u2019s branch of the Royal Canadian Legion \u2014 which had just undergone extensive renovations when the fire happened \u2014 has been rebuilt, and is scheduled to open in fall 2026. Major projects to replace the village\u2019s aging water and sewer infrastructure are well under way. And on June 1, ground was broken for a new two-storey municipal building, on the site at the corner of 4th and Main Streets where the old one had been.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got shovels in the ground,\u201d says O\u2019Connor. \u201cWe done the archaeological assessment, done the prep work for the site, and the service trenches have been dug.\u201d<\/p>\n
The ground floor will be a welcome and visitor centre, and contain two spaces with separate outside entrances that can be leased out. The second floor will contain the municipal office, and O\u2019Connor says the hope is to have the building finished in a year.<\/p>\n
The lack of other services, five years after the fire, is coming under increasing scrutiny. The RCMP detachment has returned, but is housed in a temporary trailer on leased land downtown. The ambulance station has not returned. The post office and a bank are housed in trailers located several miles from the downtown core. Interior Health has opened a primary care centre in a trailer at the same site, which is open Monday through Friday, but has not released any plan or timeline for the return of more extensive health care services, similar to what the community had before the fire, to the downtown, where they once were.<\/p>\n
Nor have any businesses returned. A small grocery store has opened on LFN land, but the town\u2019s main grocery store has not been rebuilt, despite hopes that it would be by now. There are no restaurants or coffee shops, no hotels, no liquor store or pharmacy, no gift shops: none of the businesses that served not only Lytton \u2014 with its 2021 census population of 275 people \u2014 but also the many hundreds of people in the surrounding regional district and First Nations. The closest towns with these services are Lillooet and Ashcroft, each an hour or more away along highways that are prone to unexpected closures.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Connor understands the frustration, but says that when it comes to getting businesses to return, local government can do very little.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe advocate for, and support, businesses, but that\u2019s all we can do. That said, there\u2019s often lots happening behind the scenes, slowly, but people don\u2019t see it, so they think nothing\u2019s going on. It\u2019s hard to explain to people.\u201d<\/p>\n
O\u2019Connor is also wary of announcing things prematurely, having seen too many plans not come to fruition. \u201cI hate to announce things until there are shovels in the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n
Instead, she points to things like the survival of three buildings at the northern end of town \u2014 the church, the parish hall, and a small house \u2014 that somehow survived the fire.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey didn\u2019t burn, which is almost a miracle, and it\u2019s been a blessing for the entire community and surrounding area, because everyone uses the parish hall. The Village of Lytton leases it from the parish, and it\u2019s also available for anyone who would like to book it for Christmas family dinners, birthday parties, weddings, and meetings.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe farmers\u2019 market is opening soon, which provides some food security, and the Lytton River Festival [held annually in early September] still attracts a lot of people and is very well supported by the community.\u201d<\/p>\n
The village is better off for fire equipment than it was before the fire, when it had one truck and one on order. Now they have both trucks, as well as a pumper truck donated by the Seton Portage fire department, a road rescue truck that was donated by the City of Port Moody, and an EOC (Emergency Operations Centre) trailer that can go wherever it\u2019s needed.<\/p>\n
There are around 16 firefighters in the department, and although O\u2019Connor says they are always looking for new members, she\u2019s pleased with the make-up of the crew. \u201cWe have some young people who have joined, which is very encouraging, and have members from the surrounding area as well as from the village.\u201d<\/p>\n
She adds that while the village\u2019s bylaws don\u2019t require people to adhere to FireSmart principles when building, most do so anyway. \u201cPeople are much more aware about fire, and FireSmart, and we\u2019re seeing that in practice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Black Press spoke with O\u2019Connor while the Saw Creek wildfire, which began on June 19, was threatening the town, and had forced the evacuation of the Ponderosa subdivision, which was spared in 2021. By June 23 the evacuations orders and alerts had changed to all clear, but it is a reminder that the community is no stranger to fire.<\/p>\n
The village has not organized any formal event for the five-year anniversary of the fire on June 30, allowing people to mark the day \u2014 or not \u2014 in their own ways. \u201cThe people we heard from want to look forward. They don\u2019t want to drum up horrible memories, but we have to remember the two people who perished.\u201d<\/p>\n
O\u2019Connor adds that she too is looking forward, but admits she doesn\u2019t have a crystal ball.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know that as mayor we were elected to rebuild the town, and that\u2019s what we\u2019re trying to do. There will always be a community here. Who will run it? Who knows. But there has always been a community here, and there always will be.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve had phenomenal support from everyone in the area who wants to see their town back.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Five years after the Lytton Creek fire tore through the Village of Lytton, longtime resident and first-term mayor…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":756528,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194299],"tags":[49,48,79004,87674],"class_list":["post-756527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-surrey","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-okanagan","tag-surrey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=756527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756527\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/756528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=756527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=756527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=756527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}