Fire roars back to life

This photo was shot with an infrared camera from the Dilworth Mountain area, Wednesday evening. Curtis Bennett/Special to The Daily Courier

By J.P. SQUIRE

The Daily Courier

The Okanagan Mountain Park fire awoke from a restless sleep Wednesday evening, lighting up the slopes south of the city and sending 3,200 residents scurrying for sanctuary.

Gentle southerly winds all day kicked up between 5 and 5:30 p.m. and fueled by heavy timber, the fire was soon raging along a line that appeared four or five kilometres long.

“It’s moving north between Bellevue Creek and Myra Canyon in the Priest Creek drainage area above June Springs and Gallaghers Canyon,” said fire information officer Kirk Hughes at press deadline.

“We are getting heavy equipment in place, and we’ll work through the night in areas where it’s safe for us to do so in order to establish fire guards and fuel breaks to hopefully stop the advance of the fire down the hill,” said Hughes.

Air tankers were called in to drop retardant while the Kelowna Fire Department began mobilizing dozens of firefighters from outlying areas.

The emergency operations centre which had scaled down in recent days called in reinforcements.

About 7 p.m. an evacuation order was issued for all of Gallagher’s Canyon, McCulloch Road east of Gallagher’s, Joe Rich and McCulloch Lake.

Residents fled to Parkinson Recreation Centre which had returned to recreation use from a reception centre at 8 a.m. Wednesday.

Kyle Grant, 20, heard air tankers flying low over the family’s 4141 Gallagher’s Blvd. South home about 6:30 p.m. and ran into the street to join neighbours watching the flights.

At 7 p.m., as a neighbour told him police were on their way to evacuate Gallagher’s Canyon, Grant turned and saw flames at the top of the ridge directly to the south.

In less than five minutes, he estimated it was already one-eighth of the way down the ridge.

“It was moving pretty quickly, so we were hightailing it out of there. We’re getting to be pretty good at this,” he said.

The family was ordered out on Aug. 21 and lived at the Prestige Inn for seven days before being allowed back home.

Since the area was still on evacuation alert, vehicles remained packed with valuables and keepsakes. The family was back in the same hotel room Wednesday night.

“The stress level has been pretty high. My mom was very, very upset.

“My father is desperately trying to get back to Kelowna from Edmonton,” said Grant.

While most saw a wall of smoke from Dilworth Mountain in the early evening, Curtis Bennett was watching the wildfire through his $100,000 infrared camera.

“Oh my God,” he exclaimed. “There is an absolute wall of heat shooting across the top of those hills. It’s absolutely incredible.”

The Thermacam 695 analyses temperatures beyond the visible spectrum, he explained, and has a variety of uses from medical to energy conservation.

As the president of Thermografix Consulting Corp. of Kelowna, he’s been filming the fire almost every day as he explores new uses.

“This thing’s raging, especially on the east end. It’s in the crowns of the trees. The flames are two or three times higher than the trees, and there are thermal plumes a couple of hundred feet above that,” he said.

Kelowna Daily Courier