Visitor fought B.C. wildfire with frying pan. But it became an inferno

BOSTON BAR — Fernando Balanta says he was on a trip to the landfill in Boston Bar, B.C., on July 2 when the journey took a surreal turn.

He and others found themselves trying to extinguish a fire that had started on both sides of the road, stomping on it and even using a frying pan to try to smack it out.

But the fire, fanned by gusty winds, would not go out, as Balanta and others called it in.

The BC Wildfire Service would later identify the landfill road as the original site of the Brunswick Creek fire that was discovered that day.

It would later combine with the Ainslie Creek blaze into a fire complex that has triggered hundreds of evacuation orders and alerts in and around the Fraser Canyon community.

“There’s already a couple of people filming it and there’s a couple people deciding to report it. So we all reported it,” said Balanta, a visitor to the town of about 160 residents, as he recalled the early stages of the fire.

“It just started kind of getting a little scary. (I) started seeing how it was developing and realized that this thing was potentially going to be very serious.”

In a video posted on Balanta’s YouTube channel, dated July 2, people can be heard discussing putting out the flames burning in the brush.

“Can we stomp on that?” one person is heard asking. “No, because your shoes are gonna melt after a little bit,” replies Balanta.

Nevertheless, he can later be seen stomping on flaming grass and at one point smacking the flames with a pan. But gusts of winds fanned the flames towards him.

Balanta, who had been staying with a friend in Boston Bar for a couple weeks, said in an interview on Thursday that it’s possible flames on one side of the road could have been put out if more people were there to help, but the other side was “completely on fire.”

The Brunswick complex has now scorched a total of about 180 square kilometres.

When the Ainslie Creek wildfire ripped through Blue Lake Resort earlier this week, many structures were lost, including the home of the resort’s operations manager Saeed Mansouri and his wife, who are set to celebrate their first anniversary later this month.

Video posted by resort owner Shayne Findlay shows the house has been completely levelled to smoking ruins.

Mansouri said he ended up at the resort after he became homeless and moved from Alberta to B.C., living in his SUV during the COVID-19 pandemic, and being attacked multiple times.

He said he had camped at Blue Lake before, calling it a “special place,” where the owners offered him a job and a place to live. He never left.

Mansouri has now lost everything in the fire, including decades of poetry written in his native Farsi language and photos of his childhood.

“Those were the only copies. I kept them all. (There were also) letters from my dad. My dad passed away back in 2012,” he said.

Mansouri praised the efforts of the firefighters but said the blaze “was so big and there was nothing anybody could do with any equipment.”

The latest update from the BC Wildfire Service on Friday said crews were expecting slightly lower temperatures and higher relative humidity, while warning that this “does not represent a downturn in conditions, just a two-day slight reprieve.”

“This will help moderate fire behaviour; however when steep slopes and gusty wind conditions align, we are likely to see higher activity,” the update said.

The fire service said 270 firefighters were assigned to the complex along with 17 helicopters and 37 pieces of heavy equipment.

Operations are running 24-hours a day, the service said, including with helicopters equipped with night-vision capabilities.

But crews face challenging circumstances in the steep and mountainous terrain.

“There are some areas we simply cannot put crews because it is not safe for them to be working there, and even working downslope can also create safety concerns because of issues such as rolling debris,” fire information officer Julia Caranci said on Thursday.

Boston Bar resident Kelly Anderson said the anxiety and adrenalin spikes of the last few days were exhausting, but she was glad the firefighters were on the ground.

“As long as they’re in between us and the fire, I’m feeling a lot more comfortable about it,” she said.

Jagdip Singh Bihal has been opening his highway-side restaurant in Boston Bar earlier than usual to accommodate the wildfire crews.

Bihal runs JB’s Drive-In Restaurant, just a few hundred metres down Highway 1, where the route has been closed due to the fires on either side of the Fraser River.

He said the fires turned ugly over the last week as the winds picked up, and he’s not seen anything like it in the four years he’s been running the diner.

Bihal said he couldn’t get a supplier to deliver to his restaurant, so he sent people to Surrey in his own van to stock up.

He said it’s been scary for much of the town. “Hopefully it’s going to rain and help us,” Bihal said.

An online fundraiser has been launched for Mansouri and his wife to help them create new memories. For now, he said he’s doing his best to look ahead.

“It’s a big loss, but it is what it is. And all we have to do at this point is just get going and just think of (the) future.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 10, 2026.

— with files by Ashley Joannou in Vancouver and Wolfgang Depner in Victoria

Darryl Greer, The Canadian Press