OLIVER – It’s a difficult time for an Oliver home owner who lost his dream home and most of his belongings in the Wilsons Mountain fire.
“I wanted to have an underground house all my life so I built it,” says home owner Wally Yahnke. “Now it’s all gone.”
The blaze, estimated to be 317 hectares, gutted his property on Friday. The 83-year-old says he spent more than two years building his “man cave”, which is quite literally that.
WATCH: Global News toured Yahnke’s home in 2013
He built the subterranean home into a mountainside on his 400 acre property. The underground home included three bedrooms, storage and work areas, a garage, and two small apartments where his family and friends would stay.
“It’s burned all over,” he says. “The odd thing survived but not much.”
Steve Maitland, who lived in a trailer he rented on the property, was over at Yahnke’s house with a neighbor having drinks on Friday.
“We looked up the hill and all we saw were flames,” says Maitland.
“All the power went out shortly for a second and then the power lines arced up there and it was just horrible, it just happened so fast.”
Several vehicles Yahnke collected over 20 years were also destroyed in the blaze.
“He wanted a dream house and he drilled it, built it all himself,” says neighbor Alfred Auclair. “It’s amazing how fast it went.”
READ MORE: Southern Okanagan wineries grateful to have escaped Oliver’s fires
Making matters worse, Yahnke says he doesn’t have insurance, because he never thought his underground home would burn down.
However, he says he still plans to clean up the mess and rebuild his dream home.
“I’m going to clean it up and fix it,” says Yahnke.
Anyone interested in donating to Yahnke can contact him by phone at 250-498-3545.
People in 260 homes were allowed back after an Evacuation Order was downgraded to an Evacuation Alert on Saturday.
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