On Aug.18, British Columbia declared a provincial state of emergency in response to hundreds of wildfires burning across the province. In the North Shuswap, some residents chose to defy evacuation orders in the name of staying to protect their homes and community. A video posted on social media showing someone in the region unable to get water out of a fire hydrant has been labelled by some as "suspicious," with users claiming the water was shut off by authorities. This is missing context. Fire officials say the hydrant in the video is fed through a reservoir system that had run dry because of heavy water usage, a lengthy power outage and pumps without a backup system.
A with more than 8,900 likes was posted Aug. 21 showing a segment from an earlier Facebook and Instagram story. It was also shared on X, the social media platform formally called Twitter, where it has more than .
In the video, someone is attempting to fill water holding tanks on the back of a truck with a power pump and hose. The owners of the that posted the original video told ´ºÉ«Ö±²¥they use the system to soak structures and try to knock out spot fires.
They said at the time the video was shot, there was no water flowing in the hydrant or in the houses in the area.
The TikTok clip labels the non-functioning hydrant during a wildfire as "very suspicious." The clip has also appeared in a different , which has more than 54,000 likes and is captioned "Shuswap people being stopped by RCMP from saving their homes from Wildfires."
Rating: Missing context
The fire hydrant in question is one of a handful that are part of the located in Scotch Creek on the north shore of Shuswap Lake. Scotch Creek Fire Chief Ben Pellett said those hydrants are fed by a reservoir system and the reservoir itself is filled from the lake using a series of pumps.
Power went out in the community at about 5:50 p.m. on Aug. 18 and stayed off for about six days, Pellett said.
The pumps don't have backup power, Pellett said, meaning that once the power went out they could no longer replenish the reservoir. Under heavy use, the reservoir ran dry, leaving no water for hydrants or houses, he said.
Pellett said before the hydrants ran dry, people who stayed during the evacuation order had large water tanks they were filling.
"I did a little bit of quick math. Assuming a lot of those tanks were around 300 gallons, that's a rough size and some were far, far bigger, 300 gallons is a little over 1,000 litres," he said.
"There was only a little over 200,000 litres in the reservoir (when the power went out). So it's only about 200 of those tank loads. If you say there were even 50 people with tanks running around that would only be about four loads each. And I can tell you based on what I saw out there, there were a lot of people with tanks running around all over the place."
He said in a normal situation the water in the reservoir would last "a very long time" even if the power goes out for a day or two.
"Under these conditions, of course, with a lot of people drawing water from that system, it ran out. Just plain and simple, it ran out."
He said fire crews that normally use the hydrants relied on secondary systems, including pumps in the lake itself, to fill up.
It's unclear exactly when the hydrants stopped working. Pellett said the reservoir ran dry at some point between Aug. 19 and the 21st.
On Aug. 21, the operator confirmed the system was dry and manually turned off the pumps to reduce the risk of damage when the power came back, he said.
Power was restored late in the afternoon on Aug. 24 and the pumps were restarted the next morning, allowing the reservoir to be refilled, he said.
Sources
Social media claims can be found (, ), (, ) and (, )
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2021 for the Columbia Shuswap Regional District (including details on size and capacity of Saratoga water system) ()
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Columbia Shuswap Regional District ()
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