More Kelowna evacuation orders lifted as some residents lose everything

People who lost homes in the Kelowna wildfires are now trying to pick up the pieces of their lives and figure out what’s next.

Heather MacKay’s home in West Kelowna is among the dozens destroyed by the McDougall Creek wildfire last week.

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“On Thursday morning, I found out we were on evacuation alert and I had to leave for work, so I just grabbed a little folder I have with our important documents like passports and birth certificates. I wasn’t too concerned,” she told CityNews.

But by 7:30 p.m., MacKay’s husband called informing her the alert had been upgraded to an evacuation order and that she should come home immediately to pack a bag.

“By the time I drove to our neighbourhood, our street was closed. That’s when I started to get a bit emotional. I called my family and said they needed to leave the house and asked them to grab me some stuff. My girls packed me some clothes, which has become the big family joke, the clothes that I have.”

MacKay says they were able to stay with family in Kelowna and she returned to work Friday morning.

“Later that day, I found notifications from our Wyze cam that I’d put in a cupboard. It was showing a lot of smoke in the kitchen cupboard and you could hear a lot of popping and banging. Basically, I could hear the house on fire.”

Despite the loss, MacKay says they feel blessed to have a family to take refuge with for now.

“We are in a much better position than some people because we are renting, so we don’t have to worry about rebuilding, and we have some tenant insurance so we should be able to get a start on things.

“But it’s pretty emotional … to pretty much lose all your memories… and Christmas decorations and wedding gifts that I’ve packed around with me for the last 30 years,” she says, her voice faltering.

“We keep remembering things and then thinking… oh… we don’t have that anymore. It’s been rough.”

MacKay describes the past few days as an emotional rollercoaster.

“I joke that it’s cry, laugh, repeat. Today has been really hard because I think things are getting more real now that we have to make some bigger decisions. I’m so grateful for what we have and I know we’ll be okay, but it’s just really emotional trying to figure out where to go next and what to do.”

That includes finding a new home in a rental market that has seen prices rise dramatically over the past two years.

“The hardest part is the market in Kelowna is extremely crazy and getting crazier. We were just looking at some rentals and prices have gone up so much since we moved into our place. It’s going to be a bit challenging to find another place,” she says. “We’re personally thinking of even just getting an RV and living in that because it’s so crazy right now.”

In the meantime, MacKay is reflecting on how fortunate it is her family is safe, despite losing virtually everything they owned.

“We’ve been on alert in other places so I didn’t think I needed to take everything that I could fit in my car. I just grabbed my documents, and when my husband left he had a carry-on packed for a trip he was supposed to be taking and he brought that, and my grandfather’s tea cup. So that’s what we have.”

Regardless, she can still find enough emotional energy to laugh at herself.

“It’s been pretty rough on me, and probably on my husband because I get a little cranky sometimes,” she says with a chuckle.

MacKay’s loss comes as the Central Okanagan Regional District continues to scale back its evacuation orders in some areas around Kelowna.

From Monday into Tuesday, CORD down grounded its orders for Westbank and West Kelowna properties to evacuation alerts.