"A moonscape"

Beyond Numbers, Dec 2003 by McRae, Michelle

Coming Through Fire-Kelowna CAs Share Their Stories

That's what the burnt Okanagan terrain looked like to Lori Mullin, CA, CFP, as she flew over it by helicopter in early October. "Just miles of black sticks on white ground, punctuated by the odd patch of green."

By all accounts, the aftermath is even more haunting at ground level. "I try to stay away from the areas that were really hard hit," Lori says. "There's just nothing there.

"It's eerie," she adds, "and the hurt is palpable."

Kelowna CA Bob McGowan and his wife Lynda were in the middle of dinner on the night of August 21, 2003, when a knock came at the door. They'd been on evacuation alert for two days and the moment had arrived-it was time to grab the car keys and get out. The couple drove to their daughter Kyla's house and waited.

Jim Mills, CA, was boating with his family in Seattle when they heard about fires hitting the Mission area. By the time his wife Dorothy and daughter Karina made it home (Jim had to stay behind to tie up loose ends), they had only 45 minutes to gather up some possessions before being evacuated.

Despite being on alert, Ken Ficocelli, CA, CFE, and his family had decided to go through with vacation plans. They were in Silver Star when they got word that the Okanagan Mountain Park fire was rapidly gaining strength. They came home early, packed up their first load of valuables, and videotaped their household inventory. It was a good thing they did: The next day-August 21-they were told to evacuate immediately. Within the next 30 minutes, the fire had advanced so quickly that Ken and his wife Tracy feared their house would be gone by morning.

There were actually 878 fires already burning across BC by the time a lightning strike touched off the Okanagan (OK) Mountain Park fire on August 16, 2003. Seven hundred of these fires were in the Kamloops and Southeast fire centres alone, including the McLure-Barriere fire, which grew even larger than the OK Mountain fire before being fully contained a month later, and the Bonaparte Lake fire, which, tragically, claimed the life of a helicopter pilot on August 17th.

Miraculously, the OK Mountain fire claimed no human lives-this despite flames as high as 400 feet and winds of up to 70 kilometres during the fiercest night of the blaze: Friday, August 22. At its worst, the fire was rated a Class 6 (the highest) and the winds a Class 3. According to Kelowna Fire Department Captain Len Moody, it was a "war zone," one that nearly claimed the lives of two firefighters temporarily engulfed in flames.1

Before cooler temperatures and calmer winds would enable firefighters to gain more control of the blaze by the following Sunday morning, 30,000 residents had been evacuated-the largest evacuation in BC's history-and 244 homes had been destroyed. The Ficocellis' home was indeed one of them.

Firefighters later told Ken Ficocelli his home had caught fire without flames; heat alone, some 1,600 - 1,800 degrees of it, had essentially caused the house to implode, all in the midst of wind gusts so strong that lawn furniture had flown past firefighters as they worked.

The aftermath reveals how the fire cut a swath through three sections of Southeast Kelowna, leaving areas in between completely untouched. A smaller scale version of this same random pattern of destruction is evident on the Ficocellis' property: While the house was reduced to cinders, the lawn and rose bushes survived, as did the family pool, which was drained by water bombers. The scene was surreal, to say the least.

"We have a basketball hoop in our backyard. The plastic backboard was a little bit melted, but the net was pristine," Ken describes. "Our house, on the other hand-gone."

This startling contrast no doubt explains why his property figured prominently in the next day's television news coverage.

Bob and Lynda McGowan weren't exactly pleased to see their own house on television. "At one point during the CBC national news on Sunday [August 24th], we realized we were looking at our house-or what was left of it-after we identified our neighbour's house, which was still intact," Bob recounts. "We'd officially learned that our house had been destroyed earlier that same day, but it made us angry that reporters had been allowed into the area to view and record the damage before we got a chance to see it for ourselves, firsthand."

Jim Mills was more fortunate-he's one of the many lucky evacuees whose homes were spared. After the worst of the blaze was over, Jim learned that 68 homes in his immediate area had been destroyed, the closest only three blocks away.

"Everything was gone," he says of the aftermath. "Apparently some homes were reduced to powder in five seconds. Firefighters would look away, look back, and a house would be gone-that's how powerful the fire was. Even ten days later, trees were still candling."

Though Barry Carter, CA, and his wife Andrea were evacuated during the worst two nights of the blaze, he too was one of the lucky ones. His house on Okanagan Lake emerged unscathed-though just barely. Only three kilometres away, the fire burned all the way to the waterline, destroying 16 lakeside homes.