Fires

This year is a time of disaster for my Canadian province. British Columbia is being ravaged by wildfires through the central regions.

The danger is so bad that approximately 30,000 residents have been evacuated. Several towns have been largely abandoned. It being a largely rural area, thousands of animals have also been pulled out.

About 10,000 have been accommodated in the city of Kamloops. Others have been been directed to various centres as far away as Chilliwack.

This is as it should be. These refugees are people, and need our help. The hosting communities have been bending over backward to handle the influx, and the government is trying to provide sufficient support, and to even provide direct funding to those displaced.

This is all as it should be. I have not heard a single call for the refugees to be turned away, or for the host communities to, “look after their own first.”

To do so would be heartless, and unthinkable.

This is how it should be. We are one. We are the same. No tribes exist.

Looters have been caught, and there have even been arsonists.

Nobody has said that our refugees should be kept out, as looters and arsonists could be hiding in their midst. To do so would be ridiculous. Even if this were true, banning the vast majority of people needing refuge to keep out some hypothetical threat would not occur to anybody.

The refugees are us, and we are them.