Screening of 'The Test' on Cortes Island Thursday

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Screening of ‘the Test’ On Cortes Island Thursday

Male voice: “I’ll vividly remember there was a very large wall of flame methodically marching towards Logan Lake and a huge column of smoke coming off of that and looking down at these cul de sacs and thinking, ‘wow, they look so small.’ And in my mind, all I could think was that this is either going to be a great day for Logan Lake, or a horrible day.”

Female voice: “What inspired the first activities in Logan Lake was fear.”

Second female voice: “We’re a small community on top of this beautiful hill surrounded by forest.” - excerpt from ‘the Test.’

There will be a screening of ‘The Test’ in the Mansons Fire Hall at 7 PM, on Thursday, June 20.  

“This is a documentary about the Logan Lake wildfire and their success in preparing for it using the FireSmart methods.  I believe they had been preparing for 18 years before they had a major wildfire come through the community, “explained, Interim Fire Chief Eli MccKenty.

“We're going to be holding it at the Fire Hall, so we don't have a huge seating capacity there. If we're packed in, we probably could seat about 30.  We looked at booking Manson's Hall in case we got a big turnout and it wasn't available. If we're overwhelmed, we might be able to move down to the truck bays and pull the trucks out.  If we get strong interest, we will do a second showing.  We even thought about doing a drive-in showing later in the summer when it's dark earlier and projecting it on the side of the fire hall.”

Cortes Currents: Why is that important for Cortes Island?  

Eli McKenty: “It’s important for Cortes Island because FireSmarting is important for Cortes Island. This is a demonstration of how successful it can be and how important it is for a community to engage with.”

Cortes Currents: I’m going to play another clip:

Female voice: “Until the day we got evacuated, it's almost like you feel invincible - that it's not going to happen to you.

Male voice: “Everything was going well and all of a sudden the power went out. We were down towards the acreage and we could see it rolling in on us, the gray dirty black smoke coming and then it got close enough we could see the flames and we knew it was definitely coming in.”

Second male voice: “These people came to save our community. Holy jeez we're going to war!”

Female voice: “I had one person come up to me and ask me at what point we should leave. I didn't know at what point you leave during an event like that.”

Cortes Currents: Isn’t this film a bit alarmist?

Eli McKenty: “It could be seen that way, but this particular documentary is also a success story for  how we can mitigate the effects of climate change and how we can prepare for a worst case scenario.  We may never see a worst case scenario on Cortes, but it's still relevant to prepare for it because we don't really know what's coming.” 

Cortes Currents: Do you think there's any chance we could have a major wildfire on Cortes?  

Eli McKenty: “Certainly, I think that It's a question of when, not if. In the larger scale of things, especially with climate change and increasing fuel loads in the forests and the transition of species as climate changes, we have a lot of dead cedar on the island . So I think it's definitely a risk and something that we should be preparing for actively.”