Crews make progress versus West Kelowna wildfire

WEST KELOWNA (NEWS1130) – The wildfire in West Kelowna doubled in size overnight.

It is now 250 hectares and about 20 per cent contained.

The district’s mayor has declared a local state of emergency for the district and its 31,000 people.

Castanet reporter Carmen Weld has been covering the fire for the past 24 hours.”The whole sky above you is smoke and planes,” Weld says. “Every few minutes there’s a new plane coming in, dropping on the fire.”

“There was a huge concern today the power was going to go out in a bunch of the Okanagan,” says Weld. “There’s actually a main power line that brings power to Summerland, Peachland and all of West Kelowna, and the fire was actually 100 metres from that power pole.”

Over 2,500 people are staying at shelters and in hotels due to an evacuation order issued yesterday for the Smith Creek fire.

Central Okanagan Emergency Operations says the fire is within 100 metres of the main feeder line serving West Kelowna and Peachland. The community is preparing for possible power outages.

“Overnight, it did stay quite calm,” says says Fire Information Officer Kayla Pepper. “However, in the heat of the day today, we will be watching the conditions very closely, making sure that our crews are safe and the public is informed.”

“The [evacuation] order was put in place because homes are immediately threatened by this fire,” she notes. “We can expect it to stay in place until the risk to public safety has decreased. At this time, there is still a risk to public safety.”

Mayor Doug Findlater says the wind and conditions are working against them.

“Fire moved up the mountain in the wind away from the populated area, with massive, massive flames that must be 100 feet high,” he describes.

“One of the issues is that when it is so early in the season and things are tinder- dry, you have fires everywhere. We need more air resources for the kind of terrain. This is taking place in a very difficult area for structural firefighters when battling fires on a slope.”

Findlater hopes a change in weather in the next coming days will help.

“There is some rain in the forecast and that always helps cool thing down a bit, so we will hopefully get some rain, but with rain can come lightening and everything in the Okanagan is tinder dry.”

Findlater warns more homes could be evacuated.

“We have another area of 150 properties that are on an alert right now and it all depends on the direction of the fire if it moves towards a neighbourhood then people can expect to at least get an alert.”

Meantime, more than 100 people north of Lytton have been evacuated and it’s the same situation for 35 properties around the Coquihalla Summit.

Dale Kronebusch with the Regional District of Okanagan-Similkameen says backcountry conditions are extremely dry right now. “There are so many fires that are happening and that’s the trick to this, to try and hit them hard when they first start up. You’ve got to put resources on it to try and catch it when it’s small, otherwise it becomes so large that it starts draining all the resources.”

A dozen properties on Apex Mountain near Penticton are on evacuation alert.

Because of all these wildfires, a special air quality warning is in effect for parts of the Interior and from the Cariboo region down to the border.

There are around 140 burning in BC right now, including a wildfire north of Lytton, which forced around 120 people from their homes around midnight.