Photo: Contributed

A passer by discovered a still burning campfire and the leftovers of a bush party in the Greystokes area, east of Kelowna. 

Deanna Faminoff says it was at about 11 a.m. Sunday when she noticed smoke billowing from the area. 

“I noticed a car in the ditch, a grey or silver BMW with a big ’N’ on it and we saw smoke from the distance and thought someone was camping, but it was deserted,” she said. 

Her husband rushed to grab a shovel from their vehicle as they didn’t have any water. 

“The fire was at least eight by eight feet, which is well over the limit of a campfire. They are not supposed to be that big,” said Faminoff.

Rain started to drizzle over them, which helped the flames but she says there was tons of garbage. 

“There was lots of garbage… bags of garbage, empty cans, they just came up partied and didn’t take it with them or put the fire out properly,” she said. 

Faminoff is shocked that people are still doing behaviour like this. 

“It is mind boggling that at this point where we live in the Okanagan, with this many fires that we have on an ongoing basis, especially with summer, that people still don’t take care of our earth and our planet and try to keep it safe and keep it from burning down,” she said. 

BC Wildfire Service says if a violation causes a wildfire, the person responsible may also be ordered to pay all the firefighting costs as well as a fine. A person can be fined $1,150 for an unattended campfire.