Tracey Lambert and Heiko Birkefeld are among the many across the Central Okanagan who are now struggling to come to terms with devastating losses caused when bruising winds brought wildfires to their doorsteps.
The West Kelowna couple learned Saturday they’d lost their home when they joined neighbours who’d set up a telescope outside the McDougall Creek wildfire evacuation zone, looking to see the damage wrought on their street, West Kelowna’s McNaughton Road.
“When I looked through the telescope, I was able to see the driveway and …. when I zoomed in to where our house is, I panned over left and the right to see where it was but there was nothing,” Birkefeld said.
All that remained was rubble and smoke. There was no edge to their property. No walls remained in their home. Not even the Canadian flag they once flew managed to make it through the blaze.
“I started crying and I was so devastated,” Birkefeld said.
“It’s very hard to take the feeling…. (It’s been) two days but it still sits deep. It sits very deep in your soul and your body, the memories and everything. It’s just hard to get over.”
The community has been told by officials there was “devastating damage” but what that means to each household remains to be seen.
There are more than 10,000 homes on evacuation orders and 36,000 on alert throughout the Central Okanagan as wildfires rage. Fire chiefs from each city have said that there have been homes lost, though official numbers have yet to be offered.
Lambert is no stranger to fires, as a long-time Okanagan resident. Her grandparents lost everything in the 1995 Carmi fires in Penticton and she’s been evacuated as wildfires ripped through the Central Okanagan over the years.
She was one of the 30,000 displaced even during the 2003 Kelowna wildfire, which until the 20th anniversary last week, remained the valley’s worst disaster.
That, however, is still poor preparation for a loss of this magnitude.
“It’s like a bad dream, like, it’s not real,” she said.
“When we left we took stuff, you know, what we could and we just assumed that we were going to be coming back.”
She’s grateful that they lived and that their pets came with them but there’s so much loss.
“You know you just think afterward, ‘Oh my God — I forgot this.'”
Photos and trinkets that were passed on from loved ones are irreplaceable and now her mind keeps circling back to those things. Time, the couple said, is not on people’s side in cases such as these.
With their past still smouldering the couple is now trying to turn their minds to the days ahead.
“Basically, we’re in a hotel that essential services has paid till the 23rd but we need, you know, rental accommodation, at least for a bedroom for us,” she said.
“We have two dogs and a few cats because obviously, it’s gonna take a long time to, you know, rebuild our home and whatnot.”
Even with that task ahead she is not just focused on her plight alone.
“Big hugs to everybody and just know that we’ll all get through it,” she said.
“It’s devastating. But, you know, we have to carry on, right?”
West Kelowna fire chief Jason Brolund said data about the losses will start to stream in from the field and the planning work is underway on how officials will begin to report on the numbers of loss and how to tell people who have lost everything.
“That is going to be a very difficult process logistically and emotionally,” Brolund said.
The fire was mapped Sunday at 11,000 hectares, though, BC Wildfire Service official, Jerrad Schroeder, said visibility has been challenging and limited their ability to get an updated aerial track at this time.
Overnight Saturday, there were no further evacuations, or properties lost and gains on the front lines were made. Midday Sunday, some evacuation orders were turned into alerts.
“We’re expecting at least in the next 24 to 36 hours more the same in regards to those kinds of really, really good firefighting days, which is great,” Schroeder said.
There are almost 500 people contributing to the firefight and thousands more who are volunteering in some capacity, and Schroeder said it’s appreciated.
So is the kindness being shown to those firefighters and support staff.
“It’s been very emotional for me to kind of be a part of that and to hear it and feel it from our staff,” he said.
“So thank you to everybody for your patience, your resiliency and your courage as well. It’s not just the courage for first responders that counts here but everybody else here in the Central Okanagan.”
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