Juniper Ridge residents will one day have to flee their homes again because of a forest fire, a resident told the Chronicle, making the City’s emergency evacuation routes crucial for families who live there.

“It’s not even a question of if it happened again. It’s more just a matter of when,” said Romina Wachholz.

Wachholz, her partner, and their two daughters lived in their east Juniper home less than a year when a fire prompted residents to evacuate on July 1, 2021 — and this wasn’t the first time the neighbourhood was evacuated because of a forest fire.

She remembers that night well as she’d struggled to get her youngest daughter to sleep because the infant suffered from a cold. She then joined her partner and a neighbour outside and could see the glow of the flames behind nearby homes.

A while later she was back inside, the children sound asleep. Wachholz noticed vehicles driving by, the occupants yelling for people to evacuate.

“Get out! You’ve got to get out! Get out of Juniper!” she remembers hearing as the line of vehicles whipped by.

When it became clear this wasn’t a false alarm, Wachholz and her partner packed up the kids and family dog and drove to her sisters’, she said.

It took less than five minutes to get out of Juniper, which Wachholz attests to the family’s prompt departure. She said her mom resides in Juniper West and waited a few more minutes before leaving, a delay that resulted in the hour and a half it took her to evacuate.

The July 2021 evacuation prompted the City to create the evacuation routes, one at Juniper East the other off Coldwater Drive. Ty Helgason, the City’s emergency preparedness manager, said residents toured these routes in 2023 when they first opened, but enough has changed in the interim that updated tours were held at the end of July.

“There’s lots of development in Juniper Ridge so things around the routes have changed a little bit,” he said. “There’s an influx of new folks who have moved into the neighbourhood so it’s good to make sure, if an incident ever happens, folks can navigate the routes and know where they are.”

The Juniper East Emergency Evacuation Route takes a gravel and dirt road from Kicking Horse Drive to Valley Drive while the Coldwater Drive Emergency Evacuation Routes travels from Coldwater Drive to High Canada Place.

A chief concern residents have is how to get through gates that block access to these routes — some of which cross private property — in the event of an emergency. Josh Cowen, Kamloops Fire and Rescue’s life and safety educator, said community services officers will unlock the gates and can be on site within minutes of an alarm going off.

Wachholz said a lot of things went right for her family on July 1, 2021. They left quickly and the wind was blowing flames away from their home. Conditions might not be so favourable when a fire threatens the neighbourhood again, making these evacuation routes a necessity.

She knows of families who relocated out of fear of being trapped in Juniper when a fire strikes.

“That forest in front of my house is a perfect target for a fire to happen,” said Wachholz. “There should be more than one way out.”