Westside infernos tamed
Crews working to extinguish wildfires burning on west side of Okanagan Lake being scaled back starting today
Though the sky continues to be hazy, residents of the Okanagan need not worry about the fires currently burning in the valley.
“All fires on the west side of the lake are under control,” said Glen Burgess, manager of the Okanagan fire complex for the BC Wildfire Service, on Monday afternoon.
The crews fighting those fires will be reduced to maximize effective time, Burgess said, and the wildfire crew is “very comfortable” with the fires burning there. “We will start downsizing tomorrow,” Burgess said. Three hundred personnel are currently staying in the tent complex just off Westside Road. The fight has moved to a “long-term strategy.”
Meanwhile, fires burning on the east side of Okanagan Lake are receiving a “modified response,” in which the priorities are to protect valuables and populated areas by containing the fires.
The Goode’s Creek fire, burning through Okanagan Mountain Provincial Park, is being allowed to grow naturally in some areas where no settlements are threatened.
Burgess expressed sympathy for the crews fighting the fires, saying temperatures on site have reached 42 C, and that some crews are working 12- to 14-hour days.
No cases of heat stroke or fatigue have been reported, and firefighters are encouraged to jump in the lake and keep electrolytes up during their breaks.
When asked about boats on the lake impeding firefighting efforts, Burgess responded that the RCMP have been very helpful, but it continues to be a problem.
Common sense is sometimes not as common as it should be, he said.
During a briefing Saturday, Burgess said the boaters were impeding the response of firefighters’ support aircraft, which use the lake as a bucketing tool and water source.
Burgess said the wildfire had spread down to the shoreline but was not keeping boaters away from wellknown recreational hot spots, and the RCMP were eventually called in to help keep the public away.
“Boaters are still trying to use them despite the fire being literally right there, and it began to interfere with our bucketing operations,” Burgess said.
Fire information officer Noelle Kekula said in an interview Sunday that boaters were getting too close to the helicopters and skimmers, amphibious tanker planes that can hold more than 3,000 litres of water or fire-retardant chemicals, and need room to take off once they fill up.
“Think of (the lake) like an airstrip: the skimmers need to come in and land, and then they need enough room to take off again,” she said, adding that both the helicopters and skimmers become significantly more heavy when full of water.
The helicopters lower a 950-litre bucket into the water to fill up, said Kekula, and can drop the water more precisely than the “shotgun” approach the skimmers take when emptying above a blaze.
Kekula said she’s especially frustrated by the repeated warnings to boaters whose actions are putting firefighters and their communities in danger and creating “incredible safety issues.”
She said she did not know the motivation behind the boaters getting dangerously close to the aircraft, but said she would not be surprised if they were thrill-seekers trying to ride the large wakes created by the skimmers.
“It’s the million-dollar question as to why people are interfering with our operations,” said Kekula.
Kekula hopes the warnings to the public, along with RCMP involvement, will help boaters manage themselves properly.