Farmers in the Burns Lake area are still trying to recover from damages caused by last summer’s wildfires through a government assistance program.
The 2018 Canada-British Columbia Wildfire Recovery Initiative has set aside as much as $5 million for agricultural producers to help them cope with losses from the fires.
Out of about 60 applications for assistance filed to the Ministry of Agriculture, 29 clients have been approved and almost $800,000 paid, a Ministry spokesperson told Lakes District News, and the remaining applications are under examination.
The deadline for applications was Jan. 31 and it’s estimated that most will be processed by the end of March.
The initiative also covers 70 per cent of the costs from visits to licensed veterinarians for treating livestock injured by fire, smoke or animals’ movement away from fire.
Applications for damage to irrigation systems, replanting perennial forage and incremental grazing costs will be accepted until July 1, 2019.
The last of the payouts will come next year, “as the full extent of crown grazing losses or recovery will not be able to be determined until the growing season begins,” the spokesperson said.
The family of Lisa Orr, who lives on the Southbank, applied to the initiative before the deadline but hasn’t heard back from the government yet.
“They haven’t replied to anybody yet. Do they have a deadline? I don’t know yet,” said Orr, who raises cattle and horses.
The fencing around her land was burned up in the wildfires and she can’t put some of her horses on the land until a new fence is put up.
“We had to rent another piece of property to put the horses on,” she said.
Several other families on the Southside have applied to the wildfire initiative and are awaiting a response from the government, Orr explained.
And like her family, they also lost fences, sheds and other structures in the fires.
A Southside farmer who benefited from the program said the only reason her family ended up receiving assistance is because they had the patience to endure the application process.
“The paperwork was very long and took a lot of work to fill out. A lot of people didn’t apply because it was too much hard paperwork and too many questions. Lots of pages. And the wording was so technical,” said the farmer.
Blair McBride
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