Kelowna City Hall was packed with city leaders and emergency responders from past and present to mark the anniversary of a fire that made history.
It was August 16, 2003, when a lightning strike ignited what would be known as the Okanagan Mountain Park fire.
“Twenty years ago this community came together about to battle a massive fire that deeply impacted this community,” said current Kelowna fire chief Travis Whiting. “I want to pass on my appreciation to those on the front lines that summer, and for all those that supported them.”
The fire started on the slopes near Rattlesnake Island across Peachland.
At first, it headed towards Naramata but a shift in winds a few days later changed its direction and the fire swept quickly across the mountain towards Kelowna.
“At that point, you know, we realized that you’re not going to stop that fire. The most you’re going to do is get people out of the way,” said Ron Mattiussi, who was acting city manager at the time.
He recalled the efforts that went into the evacuation plans for the thousands of households in the fire’s path.
“A lot of our efforts at that point were about determining if the fire hits this point, then we evacuate this part of the Mission…so all the evacuation, we had all the routes and then what we weren’t prepared for is on Thursday night it was, when the fire raced right across the mountain and so we had to evacuate everybody at once and that was what, 30, 31,000 people that night.”
Mattiussi remembered a conversation he had with then-fire commander Brian Kempf, who had 25 years of experience with wildfires.
“This guy had seen them all and of course the province had put him on it and I said Brian what happens when a fire this big hits urban interface and he said I’ve never seen a fire this big,” Mattiussi said.
The fire destroyed 240 homes and caused more than $200 million in damage.
There have bene many fire seasons since that devastating wildfire and in those two decades, Whiting said collaboration between agencies has grown significantly.
“We’ve got way more collaboration,” said Whiting. “We’ve worked seamlessly with BC wildfire. Our crews are so well trained and dedicated to learning all the new skills that deal with wildfires and interface fires now.”
He pointed to this summer’s Knox Mountain fire as a good example of that saying many agencies played a role including the city, which had done fuel mitigation work there.
“We also had significant support from BC Wildfire, both air support and crews and that collaboration with BC Wildfire, that work done by our parks department and then the training equipment that our crews use. That’s why Knox Mountain fire was managed the way that it was.”
Beryl Itani was the Emergency Support Services (ESS) director in 2003.
She said ESS was ready to process the evacuees but by that point had only practiced taking up to a thousand people.
“So we never did do a thousand, ” she said. “We went right from 500 to 7,000 10,000, then 15,000 and then it just went on and on and on until it was over 30,000 people at the end of the event.”
And as the number of evacuees grew so did the number of ESS volunteers, from 40 at the start of the fire to more than 500.
“These were all our friends…a lot of people that we knew,” Itani said. “Kelowna was a more tight-knit community 20 years ago. Everybody kind of knew each other and we became a community helping a community.”
While the focus at Wednesday’s anniversary reception was the 2003 wildfire, Whiting also took the opportunity to deliver an important reminder for the remainder of the current fire season.
“I’m asking the public to be vigilant, to be careful, to look around their own properties and look at the FireSmart principals, take care of themselves and their neighbours,” Whiting urged. “It’s critically important as we go through the next 30 days.”