Coming between the walls of Fire-K...

Coming between the walls of Fire-Kelowna CAs Share Their Stories

That's what the burnt Okanagan terrain contemplateed like to Lori Mullin, CA, CFP as she flew from one side of to the other it by helicopter in early October. "Just miles of black sticks upon white ground, punctuated by the redundant patch of green."

By all accounts, the aftermath is steady more haunting at ground even "I try to stay away from the areas that were really hard hit," Lori says. "There's just nothing there.

"It's eerie," she adds, "and the harm is palpable."

Kelowna CA rap McGowan and his wife Lynda were in the middle of dinner upon the night of August 21 2003 when a knock came at the door. They'd been in succession evacuation alert for two days and the momentum had arrived-it was time to grab the car explanations and get out. The coupling drove to their daughter Kyla's house and waited.

Jim Mills, CA, was boating with his family in Seattle when they heard about fires hitting the Mission area. from the time his wife Dorothy and daughter Karina made it hearth (Jim had to stay behind to tie up relax ends), they had only 45 minutes to gather up near possessions before being evacuated.

Despite being in succession alert, Ken Ficocelli, CA, CFE and his family had decided to go on through with vacation plans. They were in Silver Star when they got word that the Okanagan Mountain Park fire was rapidly gaining hardness They came home early, packed up their first load of valuables, and videotaped their household inventory. It was a proper thing they did: The nearest day-August 21-they were told to evacuate immediately. Within the nearest 30 minutes, the fire had advanced in the way that quickly that Ken and his wife Tracy feared their house would be gone by dint of morning.

There were actually 878 fires already burning across BC from the time a lightning strike touched not upon the Okanagan (OK) Mountain Park fire forward August 16, 2003. Seven hundr of these fires were in the Kamloops and Southeast fire middles alone, including the McLure-Barriere fire, which grew flat larger than the OK Mountain fire before being completely contained a month later, and the Bonaparte Lake fire, which, tragically, claimed the life of a helicopter pilot forward August 17th.

Miraculously, the OK Mountain fire claimed no human lives-this despite flames as high as 400 feet and winds of up to 70 kilometres during the fiercest night of the blaze: Friday, August 22 At its worst, the fire was rated a Class 6 (the highest) and the winds a Class 3 According to Kelowna Fire Department Captain Len grum it was a "war zone" undivided that nearly claimed the lives of pair firefighters temporarily engulfed in flames.1

Before cooler temperatures and calmer winds would enable firefighters to gain more sway of the blaze by the following Sunday morning, 30000 residents had been evacuated-the largest evacuation in BC's history-and 244 dwellings had been destroyed. The Ficocellis' abiding-place was indeed one of them.

Firefighters later told view Ficocelli his home had caught fire without flames; heat alone, a certain number of 1,600 - 1,800 degrees of it, had essentially caused the house to implode, all in the midst of wind gusts for a like reason strong that lawn furniture had flown past firefighters as they worked.

The aftermath reveals to what degree the fire cut a swath within three sections of Southeast Kelowna, leaving areas in between completely untouched. A smaller scale version of this same random pattern of destruction is evident upon the Ficocellis' property: While the house was reduc to cinders, the lawn and rose bushes survived, as did the family puddle which was drained by water bombers. The spectacle was surreal, to say the least.

"We have a basketball hoop-skirt in our backyard. The plastic backboard was a little bit make gentleed but the net was pristine," view describes. "Our house, on the other hand-gone."

This startling contrast no doubt explains wherefore his property figured prominently in the nearest day's television news coverage.

Bob and Lynda McGowan weren't exactly pleased to behold their own house on television. "At the same point during the CBC national just discovereds on Sunday [August 24th], we realized we were looking at our house-or what was left of it-after we identified our neighbour's house, which was still intact," clip recounts. "We'd officially learned that our house had been devastateed earlier that same day, nevertheless it made us angry that reporters had been allowed into the area to view and record the damage before we got a chance to view it for ourselves, firsthand."

Jim Mills was more fortunate-he's single of the many lucky evacuees whose hearthstones were spared. After the worst of the blaze was across Jim learned that 68 domestic circles in his immediate area had been ruined the closest only three obstructs away.

"Everything was gone," he says of the aftermath. "Apparently a certain homes were reduced to comminute in five seconds. Firefighters would examine away, look back, and a house would be gone-that's for what cause powerful the fire was. on the same level ten days later, trees were still candling."

Though Barry Carter, CA, and his wife Andrea were evacuated during the worst pair nights of the blaze, he too was single of the lucky ones. His house upon Okanagan Lake emerged unscathed-though just barely. solitary three kilometres away, the fire toasted all the way to the waterline, destroying 16 lakeside homes