Stuck with burned RV

Getting rid of a broken and torched recreational vehicle has become extremely difficult.

Okanagan Forest Task Force organizer Kane Blake took a gutted and burnt RV from a man with a disability and cannot dispose of it.

Blake tried to bring the RV to landfills, metal recyclers and scrap yard, but everyone turned him away.

“We’ve contacted numerous people in the Kelowna area,” he said. “If they are not going to take them, and we can’t find someone, it ends up in our bush.”

This summer, Blake’s team came across over 20 similar campers ditched in the Okanagan forests.

“I see stuff like this every time we go out, sadly. Just this summer we came across at least 20 truck campers, motor homes, tent trailers and it’s because there is nowhere to get rid of them so people are dumping them,” he said.

“There has to be something set up, because right now the system is set up to fail.”

Cynthia Coates, waste reduction facilitator at Regional District Central Okanagan, said they are a tricky item to dispose of.

“It is not an ideal situation for sure. We’d love to see somebody who has the ability to take this off people’s hands and dismantle them,” she said.

A company previously provided a service to dismantle RVs, but have since gone out of business.

Coates said the only solution right now is “if they can get them apart somehow and into the individual parts, and send the metal to a metal recycler and wood to the landfill.”

Blake said people are only being left with one option.

“Not that I am telling anyone to do this, would be to pretty much torch it and come back with a magnet and collect the metal,” he said. “Which is what we are trying to stop people from doing."

“It is so frustrating, our group is a non-profit organization who goes out and clean up all the illegal dump sites,” he said.

“If you can't take items and we can’t find a spot to take them, of course there is going to be illegal dumping.”