Quote:
Originally Posted by you&me
For now, but I'm sure the people in Kelowna felt relatively safe from the West Kelowna fires right up until they weren't.
Most arms of the Shuswap are similarly wide as the Okanagan, so - unfortunately - it's not unfathomable for fire to jump to another side of the Shuswap and change things very quickly.
We have friends that lost their cabin yesterday. I hope for the best and everyone stays safe.
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the bolded part is very true - we never thought the fire would jump the lake.
i remember back in 2003 with the okanagan mountain park fire we had a ton of ash landing at our place (we lived in north rutland at the time - so about 25km away). so having ash go a long distance is nothing new - but for burning embers to cross the lake - yea... i was pretty surprised.
yesterday burning embers were landing on top of kelowna general hospital so there was a crew up there with water to extinguish the stuff that was coming down. it's pretty scary the distance a fire like this can 'jump'.