California wildfires 'very difficult to watch' says West Kelowna fire chief 

Photo: The Canadian Press

The Palisades Fire ravages a neighbourhood amid high winds on Tuesday Jan. 7, 2025. (AP Photo: Ethan Swipe)

Raging wildfires that have killed at least five people and destroyed over 1,000 structures are “very difficult to watch” for the fire chief in West Kelowna.

“We have first-hand experience with the force of wildfire but what’s happening there is on a scale that really is almost too difficult to fathom. They’re fighting a fire in essentially what amounts to a hurricane,” says Jason Brolund.

He points out there are similarities between what firefighters in California are dealing with and what his crews faced during the the McDougall Creek wildfire in August 2023.

“Although the scale is much larger than what we experienced, it is very similar. A fire that was driven by high winds, embers causing it to travel very fast and exert an incredible amount of damage across a very wide area.

“It is concerning. We watch California very closely. They are in many ways probably five to 10 years ahead of us, not only in their strategies and tactics and the way that they approach wildfire but also in the risk and what they’re facing,” notes Brolund.

He doesn’t want to see a repeat of 2023 and has been spending a lot of time in the past year talking about living with wildfire. One of the issues that has been raised for years in parts of West Kelowna and came into stark relief this week during the Pacific Palisades fire, outside Los Angeles, is what to do when there is only one road out of a community.

In Pacific Palisades, people fleeing the fast-moving flames jammed the area’s winding canyon roads, forcing some to abandon their cars and flee on foot. A bulldozer had to be brought in to clear some cars so firefighters could get through.

“We’ve identified that as a challenge. We’ve identified neighbourhoods that are one-way-in and one-way-out and where we can, we have embarked on trying to improve that situation,” says Brolund. “For example, last summer we opened a new egress from the Casa Loma neighbourhood. So that neighbourhood now has a secondary emergency egress in place.”

He says the City of West Kelowna has also looked at other connections that could be made through development or road network improvements. He adds that while progress is being made, the events in California illustrates that single access situations can be a big challenge.

He says one of the lessons learned is the importance of having a plan and knowing what to do when an evacuation order comes.

“How are you going to gather your belongings, exit your neighbourhood, reunite with your family? These are things that we ask people to do in advance and when something like this does happen, that can make a big difference.”

Oregon is implementing new rules this year that will require homeowners living in certain areas at high risk of wildfire to adhere to stricter building codes and reduce vegetation on their properties. It’s similar to FireSmart principles that have become a major focus of public education in the Central Okanagan.

Brolund says the development permit process in West Kelowna restricts things like the types of building materials or how close houses can be built in neighbourhoods. A recently completed community resiliency plan recommends a review of that program, which he says will be happening in the near future.

The fire chief admits that there’s still work to be done to convince residents to make better choices in landscaping and even where they build.

“People build their homes on slopes because that’s our topography. They want to be located on the hillside to take advantage of that view. People plant cedar hedges because they provide a green privacy screen, but these are the types of things we need to consider, and in some cases look at getting away from,” says Brolund.

He adds that it’s ‘absolutely horrific’ to watch some of the videos that are coming out of California, especially when he hears about the loss of life.

“It takes us right back to those moments when we experienced those very similar set of conditions in our community.

“Hearing that people were injured or killed in the fire is very difficult. We were fortunate that one of the positive outcomes of our fire was that we didn’t have loss of life, but it’s pretty gut-wrenching to hear about that.”