Memories of their destroyed city followed one B.C. fire crew to the front lines in 2023.
The Lytton Rattlers Unit Crew lost everything in 2021 when a wildfire destroyed Lytton, B.C. Two years later they were at Gun Lake, north of Whistler, fighting a fire that would eventually destroy more than 50 properties and make headlines when a tornado passed through the blaze.
Nelson-based CK9 Studios was embedded with B.C. Wildfire Service (BCWS) at Gun Lake when the Rattlers began opening up about their own experiences.
鈥淭hey know more than anyone the hardships of loss in fire and dealing with interface fires just takes a whole new meaning when your whole town has burned," says CK9 Studios co-founder Simon Shave.
Wildfire, a five-part documentary series that debuts April 29 on Knowledge Network, takes viewers behind the scenes in 2023 during what was the most destructive fire season in British Columbia's history.
What the public sees of wildfires is usually at a safe distance 鈥� helicopter photos from above the blaze, TV cameras recording from across lakes. The new series by CK9 Studios and Optic Nerve Films offers rare access to the women and men fighting those fires while they are on the front lines.
Shave and Clay Mitchell started CK9 Studios in 2018, and have made a name for themselves shooting action adventure shorts for brands such as Red Bull and The North Face.
But the pair also each worked as firefighters for BCWS for about a decade. After starting their company, Shave said a film about wildfires was among their dream projects.
They teamed up with Kevin Eastwood of Optic Nerve Films, which had already worked with Knowledge Network on a documentary series following staff in the emergency room at Vancouver General Hospital, and a pilot was filmed as a pitch to BCWS in 2022.
Shave said their timing was good, and the pair's experience as firefighters helped sell the project to BCWS.
鈥淭hey wanted to tell more than just the reactive news stories that they would tell the public about wildfire. They wanted to have some other way, some other channel, to show the B.C. public what happens.鈥�
There was no lack of fires to film the following year. Three-person crews, each made up of filmmakers who had firefighting training, were on location every day at approximately 30 fires from April to October.
The first episode focuses on Nelson's Chloe Kuch, who leads a crew to put out a small fire, and moves to Lytton where residents walk over the barren land their city once stood upon.
Other episodes take viewers to Donnie Creek (site of the largest recorded wildfire in B.C. history), profile a family now in its third generation of firefighting, and go inside the funeral for Devyn Gale, who died in July 2023 while fighting a fire near Revelstoke.
Shave said fire crews wanted to talk about their work and lives with people who understood the job.
鈥淲e'd show up on a fire and you'd be meeting the crew that same day and trying to film them. I think that's what gave us a lot of success, is that we knew the lingo and the culture of wildfire, so we could go in talk about our experience and and just kind of break down the guard a little bit for people and just allow them to be more casual and give us some more intimate moments.鈥�
Although the series shows B.C. in the middle of a historic environmental disaster, Shave said he wants Wildfire to provide viewers with optimism even as summer fires become more intense with every year.
The innovative ways fires are fought, and the people on the front lines, were more important to Shave than the flames lighting up his camera.
鈥淲e don't want to leave the audience hopeless, thinking that things are only getting worse. The idea is to leave the audience with an appreciation for the people who do the job.鈥�
Wildfire will be available to watch online at knowledge.ca/program/wildfire with new episodes released every Tuesday.
