Kamloops Fire Centre deputy manager Jarrad Schroeder at fire update Aug. 20. (Image credit: YouTube)

By Kevin Rothwell

update

Progress made on Central Okanagan fires

Aug 20, 2023 | 11:35 AM

Cooler temperatures, higher humidity and calmer winds have helped an “army” of firefighters make progress on the Central Okanagan fires. There are now nearly 500 firefighters from across the province actioning the fires in West Kelowna, Kelowna and Lake Country.

“The overnight period and yesterday’s firefighting activity, they were favourable, it was good day for us to fight fire here in the Central Okanagan yesterday (Saturday). That’s not to take away from the challenges that all of our responders and everyone else engaged in firefighting operations faced,” Kamloops Fire Centre deputy manager Jerrad Schroeder told Sunday’s media update.

Fire intensity was ranked at a level two allowing fire crews to move from reacting to a more structured approach to the battle.

“There was good effort made by all B.C. Wildfire and our partnering agency crews on all the fires in the complex, so that includes both fires on the east side of the lake and the McDougall fire here. Reports back have all been positive,” Schroeder said. “Some real wins were had yesterday in that we were able to get a good foothold on establishing control lines with the utilization of heavy equipment, allowing our personnel in the overnight period to work off of those control lines.”

As of 11 a.m., 10,782 properties throughout the Central Okanagan were on evacuation order and 10,759 were on evacuation alert.

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More than 500 active firefighting personnel will be on the ground throughout the region on Sunday, Aug. 20, with support from hundreds of additional personnel working for various other governments and agencies.

The McDougall Creek fire is now mapped at 11,000 hectares and expected to be larger once more accurate mapping can take place. There were no new evacuation orders overnight, but no evacuation alerts and orders are being lifted at this time.

“We are now four days in, but it feels like months. We are finally feeling like we are moving forward, rather than we are moving backwards and that is a great feeling for all of us to have,” West Kelowna fire chief Jason Brolund said. “Make no mistake, there will be difficult days ahead and we are continuing to prepare and address those, not necessarily firefighting days, although there is lots of hard work to do, but beginning to talk about recovery and how we move beyond that.”

For the last three operational periods fire crews have been able to do “regular” firefighting, with structural crews able to get right out to the control lines constructed by the B.C. Wildfire Service.

“We haven’t been challenged with extraordinary fire behaviour that necessitied extraordinary suppression. We are dealing with things like we are used to seeing, however we are dealing with them on an epic scale and there is a million points of fire still out there across our community. So it is going to take some time and an extraordinary effort to deal with that,” Brolund remarked.

“Flames have subsided enough to allow crews to go into neighbourhoods and extinguish any flames along the perimeter of homes,” Kelowna Fire chief Travis Whiting told the briefing.

It is still unknown how many homes have been lost, but in many cases, firefighters have been able to stop fires literally at the property line.