Living in the beautiful Okanagan Valley, we are always aware of the potential for wildfires. On Friday, August 7th, this awareness became my nightmare.
Friday afternoon, after a busy week of work, my wife and I decided to go to the pub for dinner and a drink. Leaving the house, we could see a little trail of smoke in the distance. We checked the Wildfire app and found a small wildfire, less than 5 hectares, about 10km away. This was on the other side of the community of Faulder, and past the Crump Siding Recreation Site, which is a solid 15-minute drive away. We saw that resources were already deployed. We have seen many fires during our time here and have nothing but respect for the local wildfire fighters. We felt safe and decided to continue on to the pub for dinner, with only slight reservations, which led to a quick meal and a single drink.
Dinner was, as always, good, but driving home, the smoke was much thicker than it should have been. We got home and started loading up the camper with a couple of essentials as a precaution, such as adding drinking water and turning on the refrigerator. A few minutes later, the wildfire app had updated to show this fire had grown to 50 hectares - in an hour! As I was organizing the camper, I noticed an increase in traffic on our normally quiet road. Looking out, I could see the police had closed the main road and were diverting traffic to our neighbourhood. I walked up to the blockade, and one of the police officers came over to speak to me.
This is when the reality of the situation hit me. The police officer told me that Faulder was gone - burned to the ground! He explained that this road blockade was the fourth line of defence the police had established in trying to protect access to the wildfire area - they were being driven back by the quickly approaching fire. With all earnestness, he told me it would be best to start packing. I ran back home and started grabbing essentials. Luckily, I’d somewhat prepped the camper, but it was a shock to be packing for an evacuation. The process was a lot more disorganized than I expected.
I grabbed my laptops and drives, medications, a couple of treasured fountain pens, and a single journal (but no ink or refills), and I completely forgot my work Filofax with all my notes. I grabbed a couple of pipes that were ready to go in a leather pouch - but no lighter or extra tobacco. I grabbed a handful of my essential documents, organized and ready to go, from the front of my filing cabinet: my passport and a couple of my nicest watches. Because you don’t think, even though you’ve already thought about what you would do in the theoretical case of a wildfire. We packed Coco’s food and supplies, my child’s geckoes, and some essential documents and technology for my wife.
Within 10 minutes, the police were banging on my door, telling me it was time to leave as the fire was rapidly approaching. I left the house with a final handful of random, unplanned clothes that were hanging in my closet, and we were out the door - potentially for the very last time. We had no time to consider what that moment was; as if the cop’s word was not enough, we could see and smell the smoke approaching. This was serious!
My wife took her car, and I started up the truck camper. We proceeded out of the area to the newly established evacuation centre in Penticton - all the while getting evacuation alerts on our phones.
Driving a large vehicle (26 feet long and 7.5 tons) in a rush to get out of the active fire area was not fun. We took the back route to escape, as the police were barricading the main road and traffic was already busy with evacuees from Faulder who were still getting out - it was so quick that these unlucky people were barely in front of the fire. I was angry that the back route was filled with cars parked on both sides of the already narrow roads, and the edges were filled with people wanting to take pictures of the fire and the smoke. I mean, how stupid are some people - blocking an escape route for Instagram? We carefully made it through and headed to the evacuation centre. One of the most surreal drives I’ve ever made.
The evacuation centre wasn’t too busy when we arrived. Emergency services were supposed to be available, but they were still trying to set up. Coco, our dog, was very stressed while we stood around trying to figure out what to do. There was little, and mostly terrible, communication from the support workers, who were understandably taken aback by the speed of the fire and the evacuations. We went back to the truck camper to calm Coco down and take a breath. The line of evacuees continued to grow, and a support worker came out to us and told us to register in the morning, as the priority was to get people out of their cars and into hotel rooms.
We didn’t sleep that night. Between the dog barking at every dog in the parking lot, people walking past our camper, the heat of the night, and the smoke, it was rough. We still had access to our door camera, and we were watching the glow of the flames on the hill above our house getting larger, brighter, and closer. When the house power went out at 2:45 am, we felt that it was a sure thing that our house was gone. Not a feeling conducive to sleep! The alerts on our phones didn’t help - as the local government kept increasing the evacuation orders, eventually expanding the evacuation area to the entire District of Summerland and a chunk of Peachland - our neighbour town to the North - in all, some 20,000 people were evacuated within a few hours.
The fire itself had grown exponentially. In about four hours, it had grown from less than 5 hectares to over 5,000 hectares and was moving with Rank 5 behaviour - sparks were flying at a distance of 1 kilometre to start new fires in the tinder-dry environment.
At 3 am, there was still a multi-hour wait to get support services. By 6 am, when I went to check on the lineup, the entire operation was shut down! A lone security guard was on duty, telling people that the services moved to a new location. He also explained that there was no parking at the new location and huge wait times. Basically, he told us that we were on our own - with no easily accessible help and with a camper that held potentially all of our worldly possessions in it and an overly stressed dog. The idea of lining up for hours and hours (I learned afterwards it was a 12-hour wait), and I had been told that support was only for people that weren’t self-contained and lacked house insurance to make a claim off, which meant that we could have lined up without the possibility of help, was not appealing. We did have my camper, and as so many of our neighbours were sleeping in their cars, we were luckier than most.
We found a campground in Kaleden, about 15 minutes further south, that had available sites with power and water, and, in the words of my wise podcasting friend, decided to “throw money at the problem” and packed up and headed south. Thick ash was falling from the sky, covering the cars, and the thick smoke in the air made the environment apocalyptic.
Luckily, my in-laws in their trailer and I were able to make it to the campground and get set up. We had no fresh groceries and only some canned staples I keep in the camper, limited clothes, and little else. Believe me, in a shared small truck camper, we cannot live on canned chilli for long! But we were safe. That’s all that mattered.
Giving up on my house and everything I own led to one of the worst nights of my life. And the week since has been an emotional roller coaster, but more of that to come....