Fire now mostly contained, but plenty of damage done
8 homes impacted by Lake Country wildfire; 331 evacuations, with 657 more still on alert
There’s no mistaking it for anything else: The heartwrenching smell of charred wood and melted plastic.
Sadly, it’s an overwhelming scent Okanagan residents are all too familiar with.
On Sunday afternoon, that combination of scorched materials again floated heavily in the Valley, this time in the Okanagan Centre area of Lake Country, 24 hours after a sudden wildfire roared to life on Saturday.
In that time span, the fire, which started at approximately 4:30 p.m., started near the lake, then quickly climbed the nearby hillside, eventually growing to 55 hectares in size, engulfing eight homes on Nighthawk Road and an outbuilding on Tyndall Road.
How or why the fire started isn’t yet known, but it’s believed to be human caused.
Overall, the fire caused the evacuation of 331 properties, with another 657 properties on evacuation alert.
As of Sunday, the fire was said to have been contained 50 per cent by hand guard and surrounded 80 per cent by retardant.
“At this point, we haven’t been able to determine any cause (as to why the fire started), as we are still in a firefighting mode,” Lake Country fire chief Steve Windsor said during a press conference on Sunday. “That will come in due time, and it’s been spearheaded by the RCMP arson investigation and B.C. Forest Service investigators.”
Later, though, during a media bus tour of the burned area, Windsor said “we are putting it as a human-caused fire, but investigators will figure out what actually happened. There’s been lots of speculation, lots of rumour, that it was camp fires and different things. We don’t know that.”
Windsor said the fire started near Okanagan Lake in an area where there are no homes, and “my understanding is it was at the side of the road.”
In describing the fire, Windsor, standing alongside the burned houses on Nighthawk Road, said “when the crews got down below to where the fire started, it was already at these homes. So within about 10 minutes of us getting the call, we were already starting to get house fires.”
Windsor said the District of Lake Country and the Lake Country Fire Dept., had “amazing support from our neighbours,” adding that crews and equipment on the ground came from Kelowna, West Kelowna, Peachland, Joe Rich, Ellison, North Westside, Armstrong and BX Swan Lake. The B.C. Wildfire Service also provided assistance on the ground and in the air with air tankers and helicopters. According to Windsor, there were 14 heavy air tankers and four skimmer planes.
“I can tell you we all did everything we could to protect the homes,” said Windsor, noting those who lost their homes have been contacted. “This was a rapidly moving fire, and was not only fanned by strong winds (Saturday evening), but it moved uphill fast and was rapidly moving along the ground and candling in the forest canopy.”
“We never want to lose property; it’s against our basic nature as firefighters,” added Windsor. “But given the behaviour of the fire and how quickly it moved, we did our best. Again, I want to stress with all the firefighting support we received, we had many more successes to be grateful for.”
While the fire seems mostly contained, Windsor warned that weather on Sunday night was supposed to be windy, and that burning was still taking place below Nighthawk Road. Windsor noted that the fire on Saturday night was fanned by winds coming off the lake at upwards of 50 kilometres an hour.
“We want to get those extinguished before we start considering even letting people back into the Nighthawk area,” said Windsor.
For Lake Country, this is the largest fire the area has had in recent memory.
“We’ve had some further up in the back country, up Beaver Lake Road, and we’ve had some smaller ones, like Carrs Landing,” said Windsor.
“This is one area that we never really anticipated, but, coincidentally, we had done a walkthrough in this whole neighbourhood about three weeks ago with all of our firefighters, just to see where the fire hydrants and that are.
“We always anticipate that if we had a bigger wildfire, it was going to be in another area in Lake Country. So it was a little bit surprising, but when you take the conditions and the type of topography that we have here, and the weather, heat and humidity, it’s not surprising.”
Over the past decade, Okanagan Centre has become a popular site for locals to safely watch fires across the lake in West Kelowna.
In fact, some roads get so crowded that traffic nearly turns into one lane. On Saturday night, Westside Road in West Kelowna became a popular place to watch the fire in Okanagan Centre.
“We’ve obviously helped out West Kelowna when they’ve had their big fires and we’ve been over there assisting them,” said Windsor. “(But) never in our backyard, no. This is a first for Lake Country.”
During the tour, Windsor repeatedly mentioned how heartwrenching it was to watch eight homes go up in flames. Yet, he also offered this: “The good news is that we’ve been able to save much of the community. No one was injured and no lives were lost.”