Eastbound travellers on the Okanagan Connector on Friday night were stuck in traffic for hours, as a semi-trailer loaded with lumber burned.
The fire started around 5 p.m., near Brenda Mine Road. It’s unclear how it started, but debris blocked the road until 1 a.m.
Witnesses who were in line emailed Global News and described the scene as chaos.
On Friday night, DriveBC issued a series of tweets about the closure, originally saying the eastbound lanes of Highway 97C were closed to due a vehicle fire.
But later that night, DriveBC called it a challenging and dangerous vehicle recovery. It asked motorists to use an alternate route and to avoid the area.
As of Saturday afternoon, one eastbound lane remained closed. DriveBC said flaggers will be on scene until Monday, and that motorists are asked to slow to 30 km/h.
Global News reached out to AIM Roads and police for more information.
The Peachland Fire Department said it responded to a request for help at 7:45 p.m., and that it sent seven firefighters, a water tender and a bush rush to the incident, which was 14 km outside its fire protection area.
Meanwhile, one person told Global News that it was a frustrating experience, to wait in line for hours.
“We got there around 4:45 p.m.,” said Paige Ennis, adding the semi was disconnected from its load, with the middle part of its load on fire.
“At first, from a (half-kilometre distance away), all we could see were police cars, kind of blocking the traffic, and (traffic) starting to pile up pretty quickly behind us.
Ennis continued, saying they expected to see some fire trucks quickly, but they didn’t see any until three hours later — though they did see some paramedics.
Eventually, Ennis said traffic was cleared around 12:45 a.m., adding they were stuck because “there was no way for us to turn around.”
“The traffic was still flowing through on the other side for the majority of the day. So they hadn’t closed down that side of the road, yet they weren’t opening up a lane somehow for us to get over there.
“It was very poorly managed.”
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