‘Not a pleasant decision’ to let RVs burn: Oliver Fire Chief
Mayor Martin Johansen praises firefighters for efforts on NK’Mip fire
Oliver’s fire chief offered some insight this week into a gut-wrenching decision he was forced to make in the early stage of the battle against the Nk’Mip Creek wildfire.
The 20,000-hectare fire, which was still deemed out of control as of Wednesday afternoon, lit up on the afternoon of July 19 near the south end of Nk’Mip Road in the hills immediately east of Osoyoos.
With flames spreading rapidly through tinder-dry grassland, members of the Oliver Fire Department were dispatched to Nk’Mip Road to protect nine structures along an eight-kilometres stretch, according to Chief Bob Graham, who appeared in front of Oliver’s town council Monday for a regular update.
“There was one area off Nk’Mip Road where there were several RV homes, some of which were lost to the fire,” continued Graham.
“We had to make a risk-management decision that it was too dangerous for us to send a truck and firefighters into the forested area where the fire was approaching rapidly with little hope of saving the structures and a large risk to our personnel. There was no easy way of escape and it was not a pleasant decision.”
Once the immediate threat had passed on Nk’Mip Road, the chief said, his team was sent to protect 10 structures along an eight-kilometre section of McKinney Road.
Since then, the department has been called back to help with structure protection on the Nk’Mip Creek fire and even dispatched a crew to assist with the massive White Rock Lake fire near Vernon.
“You guys have done an amazing job and given everyone in this town a reason to be proud of you — they didn’t need another reason, but the feelings and the goodwill towards the fire department just grows all the time,” said Mayor Martin Johansen.
So far, officials have confirmed the loss of just a single home in the Shrike Hill area to the Nk’Mip Creek wildfire, plus the destruction of several RVs.
The fire has calmed down considerably and was described as “stalled with little to minimal growth” in an update issued Wednesday by the BC Wildfire Service.
“Crews and the (incident management team) are currently working to finalize containment options in the northeast and crews are continuing mop up on all other edges.”
Planned ignitions are also scheduled to help bolster containment lines.
The northeast flank is closest to Mount Baldy, where an evacuation order for 123 properties was downgraded Monday to an alert.
At the height of the emergency in late July, approximately 2,300 properties were under evacuation order or alert in an area that extended approximately 35 kilometres from Highway 97 east to Highway 33, and roughly 20 kilometres from Oliver south to the Canada-U.S. border.