Gun LakeGun Lake was on Alert in September, not at fire risk but due to risk that Road 40 could be closed near Moha due the McKay Creek Fire K71030 burning down the mountain.
Gun Lake was on Alert from May 31th through to July;
Other areas in the valley such as Tyaughton
Lake and Gun Creek Road were also under evacuation orders.
Because of the Tyaughton Fire K70216 which burned of 6 - 7 weeks, just under 10,000 hectares.
2023 was a busy year with three call outs for potential fires or medical assistance in June and July and a major fire from a lightening strike on Downton Lake on July 13 which let to an multiple evacuation orders starting on August 1 onwards for the Bridge River Valley.
Video & credit to Norris Girling
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Thursday Jun 8th, a call came in at 6 pm about a potential old underground fire on the East side of Gun Lake. GLF had 7 volunteers at the fire hall shortly. After a quick briefing the crew roll out with the truck and one trailer to be on the scene at 6:20pm. Upon arrival we found that the owner had dug up the ground around the potential hot spot. GLF explored for heat in the ground, found some but nothing significant. It was decided that the owner would put a sprinkler on the site overnight.
It was not a significant event, but with the hot dry conditions, GLF was glad for the call. The earlier we get to attack a potential fire the better we have of putting it out or at least limit its growth until forestry help can arrive.
Photo & credit to Randy Perazzo
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Gun Lake Fire was notified of a dirt bike accident on Lakeview road of a man down with possible broken legs. A 911 call was immediately initiated by Gun Lake Fire to 911 to have an ambulance dispatched. In addition to the ambulance it was determined that the Kamloops medevac helicopter would be dispatched as well. Three GLF members attended to the accident location to provide first response assessment and to provide location guidance for the ambulance via radio communication.
Under the direction of the ambulance attendants, Gun Lake fire members provided medical assistance to load the injured person on to the stretcher and into the ambulance.
GLF also provided stretcher loading assistance into the medevac helicopter. GLF then returned the recovered dirt bike and accessories to the injured persons residence.
Photo & credit to Randy Perazzo
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Wednesday July 5th, around 6 pm, numerous reports came in about a fire on Slim Creek road. The fire is K71145 on the BC WildFire map. It is located just north of Gun Lake.
GLF dispatched a member to check the situation out. Shortly after GLF issued a call out for its members. Numerous members answered the call out and were on scene, with the fire truck and a support trailer within 20-30 minutes.
The fire turned out to be a smoldering winter burn pile that had continued to burn underground for months. BC forestry had earlier during the day, attended the fire. No flames were present but it was smoking through the ground. GLF applied some water to the site and members began to dig out the burn pile, numerous smoldering logs were pulled out and lots of hot ash was uncovered. About 500 gallons of water was applied to the smoldering ground.
BC forestry arrived at the site and took charge of digging out the burn pile further. It appeared the the fire was still hot and smoldering a meter or two below ground.
GLF retired from the scene leaving further action to BC Forestry.
THE SIGNIFICANTS OF THE FIRE IS THAT IT WOULD ONLY TAKE A FEW FIR CONES TO BE IGNITED AND WE WOULD HAVE A SURFACE FIRE HEADING INTO THE FOREST.
Photo & credit to Rob Schuster and Carmen Stacy
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2021 GLFPS May 23 - Fire K70585 2021 GLFPS Dec 08 - Fire 2020 GLFPS First Incident
As I was heading up the stairs to go to the dump, when I heard my wife go down hard and then the yell for help. She had fallen and dislocated her shoulder with a possible break. Not wanting to cause more damage, I called our friend Linda, a retired nurse for help, and then GLFPS on the radio for their help, we have 60 plus stairs to climb to the road. Linda, was here in 5 minutes and others in 10, shortly there after Al, Ian and Tera our level 3 first aid, and then a whole crew with their equipment.
The medical people stabalized my wife, while the fire crew rigged up their equipment to get her up the 60 odd stairs. Ian went for the ambulance and the ambulance chair to climb the stairs.
We got her onto the ambulance chair to climb the stairs, that was the hardest and most painful.
The trip up the stairs took less than 5 minutes, with crew pulling from above and lifting from below.
The ambulance arrived at the Lillooet hospital around 6:30PM. They x-rayed her [No Break - Thanks God], sedated her to put the shoulder back in and discharged her 3 hours later.
As it turn out, Gun Lake Fire doesn't just fight fires, we provide other Emergency Services
Photo & credit to Norris Girling
2019 A fire between Stafford Road and Gun Lake West
Jul 21, 2019 GLFPS responded to a fire above Stafford Road early
Sunday morning, 11 members worked the fire and 2 members worked communications. It was a rank 2 fire
approximately 5m x 5m on a 70% slope.
The fire was cold-trailed by 8:30 AM.
Again Gun Lake was very lucky. We had had a week of rain to reduce the fire risk to low and the day of the fire the wind was very calm. This fire was within a 100m of residents.
Photo & credit to Al Leighton
2019 A controlled burn in April got out of control
GLFPS responded to a fire at Merle Hoch's on Gun Lake West. An open
burn fire got out of control very quickly and spread.
Merle and Gun Lake were very lucky. Even though this occurred just after the snow had melted, the dry condition allowed the fire to take hold and spread quickly. Everyone should understand how easily it can happen.
Photo & credit to Al Leighton
2017 Truck Fire - Near Vandenberg Hill
Remains of a truck fire near Vandenberg Hill. The Gun Lake Fire brigade responded to
call to deal with this truck fire, which had the potential to spread into the forest. The fire was
attacked with water from the truck tank plus several fire extinguishers. It was successfully extinguish.
There were no injuries reported, but as the picture shows, the truck appeared to be a total right off.
No
fire spread into the adjacent forest.
Again we were lucky, a fire in the forest on Vandenberg Hill has the potential to spread right into Gun
Lake. Especially during the dry 2017 fire season.
Truck Fire in action
Photo & credit to Dave Aitken
2017 Lighting Strike at Truax CreekOn August 7th, 2017 lighting struck at Truax Creek on the south side of Carpenter Lake. Fire# K71730 .1 hectares reported by a Gun Lake Resident. BC Forest Services responded very quickly and put it out.
2013 Multiple Lighting StrikesA lighting strikes east of Mount Truax
Photo credit to BC Forest Services
Lighting strikes around Gun Lake
After an extremely violent thunderstorm, BC forest services and GLFPS fought several fires started by lighting.
One of the lighting strikes was on a up hill slope on Mount Penrose looking over Downton Lake. Not well known is that one of our GLFPS member, got above the lighting strike and put in a fire break along the bench, preventing the fire from expanding further up the steep slope on Mount Penrose. Early action by GLFPS prevented a potential major fire on Mount Penrose.
Photo credit to Sheila Macdonald
2012 Sumner Creek Lighting Strike 
Photo credit to Sheila Macdonald
Lighting strike up Sumner Creek, west side of Gun Lake, being fought by BC Forest Services crew
2009 Tyaughton Lake Fire A major wildfire was started on May 31, 2009 by a careless camper at Pearson Pond campsite. The fire, having been put out twice but not monitored, finely established itself on third ignition. It rapidly got out of control and headed west towards Gun Creek and Gun Lake. Tyaughton Lake was evacuated and Gun Lake, Gold Bridge were on evacuation alert for over a month while the fire expanded to approximately 10,000 hectares.
Photo credit to Sheila Macdonald and Norris Girling
No sooner, than this fire was undercontrol and the evacuation alert and order lifted. The valley access was blocked by fires on both entrances. A fire across the road below the dam prevent access from Lillooet and two fire on the Hurley, one across the road before the bridge over the Lillooet River. Although these fires presented no fire risk to Gun Lake, they did present access restrictions which impacted Gun Lake and the Bridge River Valley.
Early 2000's A group of us on Gun Lake witnessed a lighting strike on Green Mountain. We didn't see any initial signs of fire after the strike. A short while later we observed a helicopter over Green Mountain. On further examination with binoculars we observed a crew putting out the fire from the lightning strike.
In the 1990's On August 20, 1994 a hot summer day Bud McStay, our Fire Warden was alerted of a fire burning at the dump, he confirmed there was a fire and volunteers were dispatched. I was called to assist with fighting the fire. This was prior to the establishment of the current transfer station. Nine volunteers responded with the single fire trailer stored at Fred Hoch's. We fought the fire for four hours, sourcing water from the slew at the entrance to the transfer station. With two 1.5" lines, we were able to contain the fire and controll it from spreading into the huge lumber pile and the forest on the northeast side of the dump site, but we did not have sufficient equipment to put the fire out. We successfully held the fire at bay for about 4 hours until a bulldozer that was requested from one of the company's working locally arrived. The bulldozer plowed over the dump extinguishing the fire.
I believe, this was the first fire the original brigade fought. We were lucky to have them, the fire trailer with pump and hoses to take early action otherwise with the high winds that day the northeast corner of Gun Lake could have been engulfed in a forest fire.
We were also lucky to have the assistance of the background workers of the Gun Lake Rate Payers Association's Fire Protection Committee who arranged for the bulldozer to be brought in while the brigade fought the fire.
Document credit to Sue Girling, GLRA secretary in 1994.
Over a May long weekend a controlled slash burn on Downton lake got out of control due to high winds. The crowning fire was heading northeast towards Gold Bridge BC. I reported the fire to BC forest services and they responded with a spotter plane, and shortly there after 5 water bombers. We watched and filmed the water bombers from Vanderburg hill. BC Forest services had the fire under control after dropping approximately 40 loads of retardent.
Photo credit to Norris Girling