Captured By Fire Cover

Where: Gabriola Island Library, 5 – 575 North Road, Gabriola Island.

When: Sat, Oct 19, 2019 @ 2:00pm-4:00pm

Join bestselling author and wilderness dweller Chris Czajkowski and debut author Fred Reid for a slide show and talk about their new book Captured by Fire: Surviving British Columbia's New Wildfire Reality, an exciting eyewitness chronicle of a summer in wildfire country. Chris and Fred will be available to answer questions and sell and sign books after the slide show. Free admission.

In the summer of 2017, wildfires dominated the headlines in British Columbia. As a low pressure weather system continued to cause lightning strikes, starting new fires, strong winds fanned the existing ones. Over two hundred fires burned in the province and nearly ten thousand people in or around the towns of 100 Mile House, Ashcroft, Cache Creek, Princeton and Williams Lake received the instruction YOU MUST EVACUATE NOW. But not everyone left.

Captured by Fire alternates between the dramatic first-person accounts of wilderness dweller Chris Czajkowski and homesteader Fred Reid, who both ignored the evacuation order and stayed to protect their properties, animals and livelihoods. Living in a remote area, they knew that their homes would be of low priority to officials when fire fighting resources were deployed. Over the course of the summer, as alerts fluctuated and even the firefighters pulled out, both had to decide: when is it time to go?