“From the ground it don’t look like much. From the air it reads ‘thank u’.”
A B.C. man has expressed his gratitude to emergency services personnel fighting fires around the province, using plastic telecommunication piping to construct 10-foot letters that spell out the words “thank u”.
Ken Rawson built the message in a paddock at his Highway 3 home in Fernie on Saturday after seeing helicopters flying overhead and collecting water from the Elk River as fires burned at nearby Lizard Range and Lodgepole Creek.
“I just wanted to reach out and say thank you to all these guys that drop into the Valley,” he told The Free Press on Monday.
“You never see them, you never hear from them, they’re like silent heroes.
“They come and drop in, and then they disappear, they’re gone, so you’ve got no real way of saying thank you to them, so that was just my little way of saying thank you.”
Rawson shared his homemade sign on Facebook in a post that quickly went viral, attracting nearly 100 likes and 40 comments.
He said he was humbled by the online response.
The message also appears to have been received by helicopter crews.
“I’m sure they’ve seen it because they changed their whole flight pattern to fly over my place,” said Rawson.
Rawson said the message would remain in his paddock until fire activity dies down and the smoke haze disappears from the Valley.
