Western Canada: Wildfires another blow to Okanagan wine industry

Good morning. Wendy Cox in Vancouver today.

The urgent threat of the McDougall Creek wildfire ebbed this week in the Kelowna area, allowing fire officials and residents to take stock of what was lost, what was saved and the challenges of getting life back together.

A clear picture of the number of homes and other structures destroyed is still not available, but West Kelowna Fire Chief Jason Brolund indicated Tuesday the general shape of things: Fewer than 70 structures in West Kelowna, fewer than 20 on Westbank First Nation. More are expected to have been lost in nearby areas and fire officials were doing the grim task of notifying owners of properties with significant damage.

Still, Brolund said he had cautious hope “we’re beginning to turn the corner on this fire.”

The thick haze of smoke will lift and it will reveal a landscape changed for decades, he noted.

“The mountains around our community are going to look different,” Brolund said. “We haven’t seen them since the fire and it might be pretty dramatic to start to see what we’ve lost out there.”

For the Okanagan’s famed wine industry, the wildfires have been another blow to a year that was already challenging.

Reporter Mike Hager spoke with Miles Prodan, president and CEO of Wine Growers British Columbia, the trade organization representing 180 wineries making nearly all the commercial wine in the province. Prodan said many of his non-profit’s members were grappling with crops damaged by smoke from the brutal 2021 wildfire season and the concurrent heat dome when a historic cold snap last December wiped out up to half the grapes due to be harvested in the coming weeks.

Plus, he said, the post-pandemic surge in tourists hasn’t materialized for his members as inflation has led to people slowing their spending and smoke from wildfires has made people reticent to visit.

Then add on B.C.’s ban on hotel stays for tourists in the Okanagan, announced last week to ensure hotel rooms were available for evacuees and first responders, and Prodan said the important revenue of wine tours and destination weddings has been shut down during the industry’s biggest month of the year.

There are more than 27,000 people under evacuation orders across the province and more than 35,000 on evacuation alert due to several blazes.

A fire in the Shuswap Lake region east of Kamloops has destroyed properties in Scotch Creek, Celista and other areas, forcing thousands from their homes. Some have refused to go, choosing instead to protect their properties.

Nancy Macdonald spoke with some of them earlier this week as they told her about the fight to save the Allgaier farm, near Neskonlith, B.C., which began Friday when the wind began to howl late in the evening. Three days later, the Allgaiers and their neighbour, James Krebber, were still at it, sleepless and filthy, with hands and cheeks so black they looked like they’ve just climbed out of a coal mine.

Roy Allgaier lost his voice days ago, and can squeak out just a few words at a time before weeping, tears leaving clean lines down his chapped cheeks. The Adams Lake wildfire — what the regional district is calling the most devastating wildfire in the Shuswap’s history — burned all around them, mowing through most of the family’s 160 acres. But the farmhouse that Gene Allgaier built with his own two hands 40 years ago – a surprise for his wife, Inge, who was visiting family in Germany – was untouched.

“We did the best we could,” Krebber told Roy’s daughter Claire, who grabbed him in a bear hug.

“We don’t have fire insurance,” she said. “If it wasn’t for James and my dad, we wouldn’t have a house. We would have nothing. All this would be ash — like everything else around here.”

Marnie Endersby did heed the call to evacuate her home in West Kelowna. This week she took to social media to try to find the firefighter she said saved her home from flames by wielding her garden hose.

She said her family evacuated last Thursday morning as flames engulfed her neighbourhood. Later that night, from the safety of Kelowna, she and her husband could see the fire getting closer to their home. She said her husband checked their backyard camera and said: “Babe. This is it.”

But the security camera footage also caught a team of firefighters dousing the flames. They left after an hour, but a lone firefighter stayed, battling the rest of the blaze with the garden hose.

Endersby said her home was saved with no major damage. She said she’s now searching for the firefighter, calling him “our angel and our hero.”

“Thank you for saving our home and our memories, especially for our children,” Endersby said. “I would be framing your photo in our home as a reminder to never forget this blessing.”

This is the weekly Western Canada newsletter written by B.C. Editor Wendy Cox and Alberta Bureau Chief Mark Iype. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for it and all Globe newsletters here.