2003
Where
There is Smoke, There is Fire
By Gordon Herrmann
British
Columbia’s interior experienced an intensely hot and dry summer resulting in
an extreme forest fire situation with a record number of major fires burning
throughout the interior. The provincial government declared a state of
emergency to deal with the crisis. One of the fires, the Okanagan Mountain
Park fire, was very close to home for the employees of the Okanagan Kootenay
District Office.
This fire began with a
lightning strike during the early morning hours of Saturday, August 16, just
south of Rattlesnake Island, across Okanagan Lake from Peachland. It was not
until September 20, more than one month later, that the fire was finally
contained. Consuming virtually all of the Okanagan Mountain Park and more,
it had a final size of 25 912 hectares and a perimeter of 197 km (that’s 64
000 acres, or nearly half the size of the City of Toronto). It destroyed 238
homes in the southern Kelowna area, a large part of a main power
transmission line, and several heritage train trestles on the Kettle Valley
Railway.
The fire also managed
to destroy major broadcast and communication sites, leaving a number of
broadcasters and communication service providers to rely on backup
generators or to find alternate sites. Work to restore normal broadcast
services continues and will likely not be complete until next Spring.
Office staff were kept
busy responding to the needs of emergency personnel as they coordinated
their response to the disaster, and authorized changes necessary to restore
lost services for broadcasters. Some of these services included providing
quick authorization for communications systems being brought into the area
by agencies such as the RCMP and the Department of National Defence.
The
Okanagan Kootenay District Office also kept the provincial Emergency
Operations Centre and critical communication users informed of communication
site locations throughout the interior that were at risk, so that
preventative work could be done to protect these sites in the event the fire
reached them.
Two of our colleagues
were directly affected by the evacuation. Nick Coe, Spectrum Management
Officer, who lives in the lower Mission area, was evacuated for three days,
but the fire never reached the area and no homes were lost in the vicinity
of his. Dave Thomson, Competition Law Officer, lives in Crawford Estates –
one of the neighborhoods that lost many homes. The fire came within a few
blocks of his home and he and his family were evacuated for almost a week.
Upon returning, they were unable to stay in the house for a few more days
due to the heavy smoke in the area.
Approximately 30 000
Kelowna residents were evacuated, yet amazingly, there were no fatalities or
even serious injuries. It was not until mother nature brought a change in
the weather that the firefighters were able to bring the fire under control. |