When wildfires burned near Fort Nelson in May, Hillary Sheppard was forced to evacuate from the northern B.C. community for 17 days. Like many of the 4,700 residents who left the region, Sheppard found it hard to obtain reliable information about alleged criminal activity in the evacuated community.
“You’re trying to read between the lines,” said Sheppard, about sorting fact from fiction on social media. “[T]rying to connect the dots while you’re gone about what you might expect to come home to.”
Unconfirmed information circulated on social media, including claims that looters were stealing guns and being arrested and released back into the community. Residents keeping an eye on their homes through home security cameras said they were seeing strangers on their properties.
Official information about the real or rumored looting in town was lacking, according to residents.
The RCMP did announce several arrests related to “property crime” during the early stages of evacuation and brought in additional Mounties. But they otherwise provided few details to the public about the arrests or scale of crime.
“None whatsoever,” said Ian Langstaff, a resident of Fort Nelson and one of the holdouts who stayed in town for the duration of the evacuation order.
The absence of official information about looting heightened anxiety among Fort Nelson residents, both inside and outside the evacuation zone, says Langstaff.
“It just turned into a free-for-all in town … A lot of people were scared,” said Langstaff, especially when, for 36 hours during the evacuation period, the RCMP left town.
The Mounties’ exit followed a briefing by fire behaviour specialists with B.C. Wildfire Service about the escalating danger of the encroaching wildfires.
“I understand property crime incidents happen, but nothing will supersede [the RCMP’s] safety,” said RCMP Chief Superintendent Brian Edmonds by Zoom at a post-evacuation community meeting attended by residents in person.
‘Bad apples’
The RCMP’s own evacuation prompted some residents who stayed behind to take matters into their own hands.
“There was nobody here, so then we made a ‘citizens on patrol’ essentially, to guard the streets to try to eliminate any theft,” said Marty Wells, who headed the volunteer group.
Using a group chat, eight citizen patrollers working day and night shifts monitored and documented perceived looting threats in the evacuated town.
Initially, Wells says the group aimed to fill in for the evacuated RCMP officers. But they ended up patrolling for the duration of the evacuation order.
The volunteers mostly targeted the movements of a few “bad apples” in town to discourage them from looting, says Wells.
In the end, however, they witnessed little crime.
“Pretty minimal,” he said.
That observation would later be echoed by the RCMP, which called the incidents of theft and vandalism “isolated” and “limited.”
During the evacuation, however, residents watching from afar didn’t receive that information.
The RCMP did not respond to Canadian Affairs’ multiple requests for comment on specific questions by press time.
‘Highly exaggerated’
The RCMP have been criticized for their poor communication with disaster victims before.
An investigation into the RCMP’s actions during the historic 2013 flooding in High River, Alta., found that the police’s poor communication with the public “undermined public confidence in the RCMP,” according to a report released by the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP, an independent agency that examines complaints against the RCMP.
The RCMP eventually paid more than $2.3 million to High River residents whose property was damaged by Mounties during their searches of residents’ homes and seizure of firearms.
The investigation found that speculation and rumours developed because the RCMP did not communicate to the public why they were taking actions like entering flooded houses more than once and seizing unsecured firearms.
Experts say the scale of looting during natural disasters is often overestimated and then inflated further by the media.
“There are decades of disaster research out there documenting that concerns about looting tend to be highly exaggerated,” said Jocelyn Stacey, an associate law professor at the University of British Columbia who specializes in disaster law, emergency powers and the rule of law.
Despite this research, “governments and law enforcement often really focus on [looting concerns],” said Stacey, underscoring that exaggerated claims of looting can actually distract authorities from the crucial and urgent work of coordinating emergency efforts.
Law enforcement may not be able to release certain information for legal reasons, says Jack Rozdilsky, an emergency management researcher at York University.
But wherever possible, authorities should explain why they make certain decisions in an emergency and constantly update those experiencing an evacuation with credible, detailed information about looting to prevent misinformation on social media and anxiety among evacuees, said Rozdilsky.
“People want information as quickly as they can,” said Rozdilsky. “When there is a gap or a vacuum of information, people will be very anxious to fill that gap with any information that exists.”
Rozdilsky emphasized that anxious residents who overestimate the scale of looting could return home before it’s safe to do so, or participate in acts of vigilantism. They could also obstruct the life-saving efforts of first responders.
Ultimately, the wildfires in Fort Nelson in May damaged just six buildings and destroyed four homes — three of which were occupied, according to Rob Fraser, Fort Nelson’s mayor.
When Sheppard and her children returned to their Fort Nelson home after the evacuation, they did victory laps around the yard with their dogs.
But then Sheppard opened the garage door and discovered the dirtbike she had bought for her daughter the previous year had been stolen while they were gone.
“I do feel really silly about it,” said Sheppard, who knows things could have been much worse. “People lost their homes, and it was just a dirt bike.”
Theft is common in Fort Nelson, Sheppard says. But the invasion of her property while their town was evacuated still rattled her.
“That feeling like somebody else has been in your sacred space or your safe space … It’s truly unsettling.”
