Kelowna wildfire crews trapped after people didn’t evacuate: Fire chief

In what the West Kelowna fire chief describes as his “worst nightmare,” some firefighting crews were trapped behind a massive fire front Thursday overnight into Friday.

West Kelowna Fire Chief Jason Brolund says as his crews were fighting the McDougall Creek wildfire, people were unable to get out.

“We had people trapped — that’s the fire chief’s worst nightmare.”

Brolund says crews became trapped after attending to folks who did not evacuate their properties when told to.

“Those emergency responders were trapped because they were rescuing members of the public who had chosen not to leave,” he said.

Wildfire fighting crews say the weather and wind won’t become favourable for firefighters Friday, and urge anyone who is on an evacuation alert to be ready to go at a moment’s notice when, not if, it turns into an evacuation order.

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“We’re in the thick of it right now, and today’s gonna be a challenging day again. The winds are stronger than they were yesterday,” he said.

“There are homes burning out there right now and there are homes at risk and we’re gonna do our best to stop that. If you’re on evacuation alert, you need to be prepared to go to evacuation order immediately. We put you on evacuation alert for a reason.

“This is the real deal and it is likely that that evacuation order will come at some point. You need to be ready. You need to cooperate when authorities asked you to leave.”

While Brolund says most evacuated West Kelowna Thursday night in an “orderly manner,” he is “desperately” hoping that “all left when we asked them.”

“We knew that it was going to be bad. This is what we planned for, and this is what we practice for, but it was exponentially worse than we had expected.”

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Brolund warns of continued embers and ash falling from the wildfire, as the McDougall Creek fire has shown that it can spot over very long distances.

“We’ve got a great team here. We’re gonna get this thing and it’s because of the hard work of all of the people that are making it happen.”