Escaping The James Bay Wildfire

I scrambled back to the bike, loaded it as quick as I could, scrambled it back up to the roadway. I was in a bad spot, and I didn’t know just how bad at first, because the smoke was still light. But as the smoke thickened, I realized I didn’t know which way to ride. Was the road cut off to the north, or the south, or both, or neither? I didn’t know, and I was hundreds of kilometers from the nearest cell tower. There was no way to know.

I decided to ride north to the Waskaganish barricade, thinking maybe there would be someone there to tell me which direction was safe. But when I got there, there was nobody around. Decision time: head 150 kilometers north, to the possible safety of the outpost at the 381-kilometer mark, where I knew they’d have information and fuel? Or 230 kilometers south, back to Matagami, running the risk of exhausting my fuel supply?

I didn’t want to be stuck at the northern outpost, so I decided to chance the run back south. I figured I would be out of the smoke soon enough anyway, but the miles kept ticking by and that wasn’t the case. It kept getting worse and worse, and I realized the wind could be pushing the fire to the road a lot quicker than I could get away from it—but there was no way of knowing.

And then, help appeared, sort of. I met a truck of native fishermen pulled over, who had just come up from the south. The road wasn’t bad where they’d just come from, they said. They were turning back, and I could follow them. They had spare fuel, and if my reserves ran out, they could rescue me. I followed them and thought we were only a few minutes away from safe traveling.

But the smoke got worse, and then we hit rain caused by the wildfire’s clouds. It was getting hard to see, and I was hitting the early stages of hypothermia before I pulled over and wiggled into my rain suit. I was afraid that if I pulled off, the fishermen wouldn’t see me, and my one lifeline would disappear into the low visibility. By now, the smoke itself was a massive danger, but I was also in danger of oncoming traffic running me over in the low-visibility conditions. There was also the possibility of running into wildlife being pushed by the smoke. I needed that truck in front of me to protect me. Thankfully, they noticed me pulled off and waited.

Then, we got behind another car, driving very slowly. The fishermen were OK with this, but the pace was so slow that I realized I had another problem on my hands. At the rate we were going, I’d run out of gas before getting back to Matagami, and I needed to get there ASAP because of the cold, wet conditions. The drivers in the car and truck could crawl along, and they’d eventually arrive in the middle of the night. I was much more at risk from the low visibility and weather, and also was breathing unfiltered air thick with smoke. I had a tough call to make: try to tough it out in the convoy, or go it alone.

I decided to go it alone. I pulled out in front of the car and headed down the road as fast as I dared, which wasn’t very fast. Twenty-five kilometers an hour, or less in parts, because I just couldn’t see. At some points, I was only able to navigate by watching the road’s centerline beneath my boot; I knew that if I met a car crowding the middle of the road, I was dead. I hunkered down behind my rain-blocking windshield, prayed, and watched for oncoming traffic.

After more than 150 kilometers of riding through these conditions, the smoke finally started to lessen, although the rain kept up. But at least I had better visibility and could breathe now; as I reached the end of the Billy Diamond Highway in Matagami in the late evening, I have never been more glad to see a checkpoint in my life.

“Where can I stay?” I asked the emergency staff at the checkpoint. They told me the town’s meager accommodations were already full, but that emergency measures personnel had commandeered the local rink. That’s where I spent the night, on a mat on the concrete floor of the rink, with probably a half-dozen families, mostly Cree who had been on their way home north when they were stopped by the smoke. A supper of Cheetos never tasted so good, after I had shower in the dressing room.

The next day, I hung around for a couple of hours, wondering if maybe the situation would change. It didn’t; nobody knew much of the situation, only that the people up at the 381-km outpost were stranded. I realized I was just a drain on resources if I stayed, so I rode south, and worked my way back home.

Lessons learned

1. Information can save your life. If I’d known the extent of the fire, or that a change in the wind was coming, I would have stayed south, away from the blaze. My unfamiliarity with local language and other factors didn’t help here, but I should have checked into the situation more carefully.
2. Know your options, but when you have to act, act decisively. The longer I stayed on the road, the worse the situation got. The decision to travel alone by myself was a trade-off in dangers, but it was the best solution I could think of.
3. Keep communication lines open. In my case, there was no cell network to use in the wilderness, but in a wildfire in urban or suburban areas, cellphones and landlines can’t be relied on, as fire destroys the comms grid. A radio system can be a life-saver. In my case, I had a Zoleo sat comm that I could have used to reach out for help if I’d been cut off by the blaze. Thankfully, that wasn’t necessary.
4. Be aware of more hazards than just fire and smoke. In my case, hypothermia could have easily caused me to crash; the hazards in your area will be different. Are there live electric wires down? Is important infrastructure (a dam, a bridge) threatened? Is there looting? A wildfire can cause a chain reaction of other dangers.
5. Make it a discipline to be prepared. In my case, I’d packed extra fuel on the bike, and I eventually needed it. This is an easy practice for most of us; keeping an extra jerry can around might be the difference between escaping danger, and fleeing on foot once your vehicle dies.
6. A lot of people think a motorcycle is the ideal vehicle in a SHTF situation, but that’s not always the case. In my situation, the weather and low visibility worked against me, and a car would have been better.

The Hoser

Some say he once lobbied a Canadian province for a grant to start a bear farm, and that his family background in commercial lobstering has left him genetically incapable of fishing catch-and-release waters. All we know is, he’s called The Hoser.