People in downtown Kelowna watch McDougall Creek wildfire burning in West Kelowna, B.C., on Aug. 17, 2023 — almost exactly 20 years after the Okanagan Mountain Park fire forced evacuations and destroyed hundreds of homes in Kelowna.
What's "frustrating," one ecologist said, is that the advice on how to prevent the next fire is still the same.Father of 2 who lost home in 2003 Kelowna wildfire offers advice for families experiencing the same todayScott Sieben, who lost his home in Kelowna's Kettle Valley area 20 years ago, speaks about the bond he built with his neighbours after surviving what was then the worst fire season in provincial history.
The remains of Scott Sieben's home are visible from a helicopter flying over Kelowna, B.C., on Aug. 24, 2003. Sieben's home is the last burned one on the left with the detached garage still intact. Hundreds of kilometres west, Robert Gray monitored the fire's spread last week from his home in B.C.'s Fraser Valley. A wildland fire ecologist of 43 years, Gray saw similarities from 2003"They both behaved very much the same way: Both high intensity, high severity fires and the effects are very similar.
"There's obviously been more development since 2003. So there's more people on the landscape, there's more businesses on the landscape today as opposed to 20 years ago," said Flannigan, who is a professor of wildland fire at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, B.C. Fire rages out of control in Okanagan Mountain Park fire on Aug. 18, 2003. That fire caused $200 million in damage, forced 33,000 people to evacuate their homes and destroyed 239 houses.