Rain brings wildfire relief, homeowners to receive bad news online

As expected, the welcome rains overnight into Wednesday helped crews make further progress on the three wildfires burning in our area.

Those weather improvements along with continued efforts by firefighting crews is expected to prompt the start of small-scale downgrading of some evacuation orders to alerts.

But the grim news many people have been waiting for in that community will be known Wednesday afternoon and shared to them on the Central Okanagan Emergency Operations website.

Online notifications for property loss

Eighty-four properties have been confirmed as either partially or fully destroyed in the West Kelowna area by the McDougall Creek Wildfire.

Sally Ginter, Emergency Operation Centre Director with the regional district explained why homeowners would learn the difficult news online by entering their address on a portal page.

“In a perfect world, our preference, without question, would be to personally call every single homeowner and be with them when they receive what is probably the worst news they’ll ever receive,” Ginter said during a media briefing Wednesday.

She said however, that in a social media world information and images were “flying around faster than we can even begin to think we can manage,” and gave the example of a media outlet showing a homeowner viewing images of their lost home for the first time.

“The reason we’re doing this website isn’t because we don’t care, it’s because we do care,” she said.

The information is expected to be posted Wednesday afternoon here.

Further north along the most damaged area of the western side of the lake, in the Traders Cove area, there have been a confirmed 90 partially or fully destroyed properties.

But North Westside Fire Rescue Chief Ross Kotscherofksi was eager to highlight this was not the total loss of structures, as there were 195 units at the Okanagan Lake Resort property that burnt down. Safety and risk assessments are still underway.

Fire status

Meanwhile, BC Wildfire Service (BCWS) crews have made gains on the local blazes but they are still out of control.

The McDougall Creek fire was measured at 12,200 hectares, a noticeable slowing of growth compared to last week. BCWS expected to get more aerial assets into the fight Wednesday thanks to the significant rainfall and reduction in smoke.

“The rain really makes an impact on the fine fuels - the surface litter - and that’s the primary driver for spot fires,” Brad Litke with BCWS said. He suggested there could be an improvement in status on the Kelowna and Lake Country fires by Friday.

A full guard to 100 feet all the way around the Clifton/McKinley fire in Kelowna could be finished by end of day Thursday, Litke said.

Process for safe return

While there was expected to be some small rescinding to evacuation orders Wednesday, West Kelowna Fire Chief Jason Brolund emphasized the many different factors at play before an area or street is no longer deemed a risk to the public.

He listed continued flames, debris and hazards, fire protection, working utilities and road surface conditions as all having to be assessed before allowing anyone back home.

And, in the event the situation worsened and escalated, he said it had been proven people were less likely to evacuate for a second time if required to do so.

“We want to make sure there’s no risk of that,“ Brolund said. “We meet multiple times a day [with RCMP and BCWS] over a map, and we provide recommendations."

Running out of underwear

Brolund and his family are like thousands of others who remain out of their home and he asked for continued patience.

“There are many factors that go into you returning to your home. I’m feeling the same things you guys are. I’m running out of underwear too folks,” he joked. “ I get it, we’re going to get this across the finish line.”