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UPDATE 11:10 a.m.
At least 50 structures have been lost or damaged to the McDougall Creek wildfire within the City of West Kelowna and Westbank First Nation.
West Kelowna fire chief Jason Brolund says there have been NO structural losses in the Shannon Lake, Talus Ridge, Smith Creek, Rose Valley neighbourhoods as well as the Lenz Road modular home park.
The 50 structure estimate came with a caveat from Brolund that “we're not done yet. And the most damaged neighbourhoods are still to come. “
“However, I think it's important that people begin to understand the scope and scale of what our community is facing.”
Brolund said the numbers of structural losses will certainly climb beyond 50, noting damaged assessments have only taken place in the “easy” neighbourhoods.
“But we're moving into the areas where the fire burned hottest. I describe it as a hurricane, trees pushed over by their roots. This is the kind of neighbourhood that we're in today. So undoubtedly, that number will grow higher.”
He noted that the hardest hit neighbourhoods are also the most rural. Homes are further apart and some properties have multiple homes on them.
“So we're having to actually be boots on the ground searching through the properties to get the counts,” he said.
Canada Task Force 1 has been helping with damage assessments in West Kelowna and on WFN lands and has not made their way into the Westside Road area of the rural district.
As a result, North Westside fire chief Ross Kotscherofski could not provide a number of damaged or lost structures in his area, but said structural loss has been sustained along Westside Road “all the way up” to the Lake Okanagan Resort, which was also destroyed.
He said the Traders Cove neighbourhood was the hardest hit. There has been no structural loss north of the resort.
Brolund says they are working as quickly as possible to get information out to property owners and lifting evacuation orders.
“I know people want to know information, and I know they want to go home,” he said.
“We are going to take a systematic approach to both of those. We're going to do it right. We're going to make sure that to the best of our ability we don't make mistakes, we don't tell someone something that isn't true. We don't send you into a place that's not safe for you to be.”
Brolund did not provide an estimate as to when evacuation orders and alerts may be lifted, but suggested there is a lot of work still to do to make some neighbourhoods safe.
Downed power lines need to be repaired, roads may not be passable.
“In many cases right now, your neighbourhoods and houses are covered with sprinklers and those sprinklers are protecting your home, but it means we can't send you home because the streets have fire hoses, fire pumps, water bladders scattered throughout the area.”
Jerrord Schoeder of the BC Wildfire Service says the McDougall Creek wildfire, like the other two fires burning in the Central Okanagan, remain classified as out of control, but “excellent” progress has been made over the past 24 hours.
“We're not expecting any rapid increases in fire behaviour or spread on any of these fires today… while we are still working into the context of extreme drought conditions and our fire weather values are in the extreme levels,” Schoeder said.
He said crews continue to focus on structural protection and the interface areas.
It is hoped that the smoke hanging in the valley may lift this afternoon enough to allow firefighting aircraft to get up and into the sky.
Brolund noted that the thick smoke is one of the biggest challenges facing crews on the front lines right now. “It is choking.”
“The firefighters are outside working in it relentlessly. They're breathing it for 12-14-16 hours at a time. So it's a real challenge.”
In an update online, BCWS said the fire is burning at rank 2 and 3 (out of 6).
"Heavy equipment machine line has been constructed between Shannon Lakes estate and Bartley Road, crews will be securing this section of guard using small scale hand ignitions to remove unburnt fuel between the fires edge and the guard," the update said. "Line locators are also working with heavy equipment to assess machine lines to connect the fire’s edge into an old fire scar from 2015."
UPDATE 10:30 a.m.
At least 50 structures have been lost or damaged to the McDougall Creek wildfire within the City of West Kelowna and Westbank First Nation.
West Kelowna fire chief Jason Brolund says there have been NO structural losses in the Shannon Lake, Talus Ridge, Smith Creek, Rose Valley neighbourhoods as well as the Lenz Road trailer park.
The 50 structure estimate came with a caveat from Brolund that “we're not done yet. And the most damaged neighborhoods are still to come. “
“However, I think it's important that people begin to understand the scope and scale of what our community is facing.”
That figure also does not include the areas of Westside Road outside of city limits and WFN lands.
More to come…
UPDATE 10 a.m.
Central Okanagan Emergency Operations is providing a live update on the wildfire situation.
Story coming...
UPDATE: 8 a.m.
Heavy smoke continues to hang over the Okanagan Monday morning. If the smoke persists, firefighting air support may be limited for the second day in a row.
"It really depends on what the visibility is," says BC Wildfire Service spokesperson Nicole Bonnet.
"Because there are three fires throughout the complex and we have 14 helicopters assigned to the complex, they're able to move around to all of the fires. So, depending on what visibility is like since they are in slightly different geographical locations, if visibility is better in one place than others, then they may be able to fly."
Environment Canada meteorologist Philippe-Alain Bergeron tells Castanet that visibility due to smoke is fluctuating between three-quarters of a mile to a mile and a half at Kelowna International Airport Monday morning and temperatures are cooler.
"Certainly, the weather is helping, maybe not immediately, but starting tomorrow it will be even cooler because we have the remnants of the moisture from Hurricane Hilary," says Bergeron.
"So there's a good chance of showers. It's not a lot at Kelowna, it's mostly to the east, in the Monashees, Shuswap and Kootenays, but you're kind of on the western edge of all of that. But that should help."
The ground firefighting army has grown to 500 personnel, and Bonnet says they can work through the smoke – but it's not easy.
"It definitely really sat down thick. We thought from a weather perspective that maybe there was going to be a little bit more movement in the atmosphere and that some of the inversion was going to lift, which is part of what's holding the heavy smoke down. But, obviously, that decided not to happen. So we'll see what happens today," Bonnet says.
Central Okanagan Emergency Operations will hold a press conference at 10 a.m. this morning to update the fire situation and lay out today's objectives. Castanet will carry that stream live.
ORIGINAL: 4 a.m.
It was another calm but extremely smoky night in the Central Okanagan as firefighters worked to gain the upper hand on three large fires in the region.
Hundreds of firefighters from across B.C. had a long list of objectives Sunday during what officials were calling a “good firefighting day.”
Central Okanagan Emergency Operations said in a tweet late Sunday crews made “good progress” during the day and would keep the foot on the gas overnight.
A live update on the progress being made in controlling the fires will be provided by Central Okanagan Emergency Operations at 10 a.m. Castanet will carry that news conference live in this story.
On Sunday, only one evacuation order—in the Quail Ridge and UBCO area—was lifted across the region.
Rapid damage assessments started taking place in fire zones on Sunday, but the process of how that information will be distributed to homeowners is not known yet. Many evacuees have spent the last two days peering through the smoke in binoculars and telescopes to try to see the condition of their homes.
The air quality in the Central Okanagan has been hazardous for two days, but the provincial government’s smoke forecast said it could start to clear Monday.
Rain is also in the forecast for Monday night or Tuesday as moisture from Hurricane Hilary makes its way into the region.
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