Jeff and Crystal Findlay's home was completely destroyed in the McDougall Creek wildfires.

Image Credit: Jeff Findlay

Angry and upset Bear Creek Road evacuees gathered outside MLA Ben Stewart’s office today to demand answers as to why they still have not been allowed back onto their properties or been given any conclusive information about the damage to their homes.

One of the residents, Lara McDonald, told iNFOnews.ca that if an insurance adjuster is not allowed into her home by this Friday, she may not be able to make an insurance claim for her damaged property.

“Most insurance companies believe that in 30 days an adjuster will be able to go up to your home,” McDonald said. “Well, we're on 30 days coming up. No adjuster, no official information. And myself, along with many of our neighbours are in the same boat of any expenses that we accrue. So, I'm not only on the hook for my mortgage, I am on the hook for the rental property that I had to find for my three kids, husband, three dogs, myself. So, to say we're all just a little bit under stress would be an understatement.”

Richard Soneff, another Bear Creek Road resident, said just a short visit into his home would have allowed him to save tens of thousands of dollars in damages.

“I understand it's important to get the civil infrastructure back up and running. But why could you not give people a few hours to go and get the fridges out of their house, or get the food out of the fridges,” Soneff said. “We have seven fridges in our house. Three of them have meat in them. Those three fridges are $30,000. $10,000 each…we could have emptied the fridges and saved our insurance companies $30,000.”

More pressingly though, Soneff said that he wants access to his home so that he can safeguard his belongings from thieves.

“The part that keeps us up at night and gives us bags under our eyes and stresses us the most is that our home being situated where it is a sitting duck for crime,” he said. “This year we've had two incidents prior to the fire. So, it's really important for us to get in, get our security systems up and running, get our camera systems up and running. But we can't. We're just told that you can't and that's not true.”

Mike McCabe said he is still yet to receive a single phone call from the regional district about the state of his property or when he will be allowed back home.

“Communication is the biggest failure. You phone them up and of course they don't know anything they're just the person answering the phone, ‘oh we'll call you in a day or two.’ Almost a month later and I've yet to receive a call. So frustrating,” he said.

Bear Creek Road residents gather outside of Ben Stewart's office to ask when they will be allowed back on to their properties.

(GEORGINA WHITEHOUSE / iNFOnews.ca)

The residents all greeted each other warmly before the meeting, hugging and exchanging some reassuring words. They are all part of a WhatsApp group chat, where they keep each other informed of any news or updates about the area.

They formed a circle around MLA Ben Stewart as he came out to greet them.

“I've been trying to get the answers for you every day since this fire started,” Stewart said. “This is a very traumatic time for anybody that has been evacuated, that doesn't know whether their home has been damaged or impacted by this, but I want to make certain that we do our very best to make certain that the resources are there to help you if you have to rebuild.”

The first question came from Loretta, another local resident.

“At this point, some of the insurance is going to be running out... for temporary accommodation,” she said. “We've all got rentals that we need to go find. As you know, the rental market here in Kelowna is very difficult. A lot of them want three month, six month, eight month commitments. Are we going to be out for one week, two weeks, two months?”

Stewart promised the residents answers within the next 24 hours.

Some residents expressed their dismay that they had been given such vague, and sometimes even incorrect information about the damage to their property.

“There were some people that lost their homes that said they were fine, and vice versa,” Lara McDonald said. “The lack of communication that has gone on for all of us up there is staggering. It's absolutely ridiculous what we've all had to go through. Our families, our children, our animals. This is unacceptable, and as a community we really have an opportunity to step in as a prototype and say, no one needs to do this again. No one needs to. No one has to.”

Her words were met with applause from the group.

Jeff Findlay, a ranch owner in the area, said he wished more had been done to suppress the fire when it was still a manageable size.

“I think I'm just looking for accountability on how this fire started, where it started at Carrot Mountain two days before. It was a hectare in size. And we really feel like there wasn't a lot done about that fire at that time," he said. "Two days later, our house was all burnt to the ground.

“So, I would really like to see some kind of inquiry as to what decision was made to not put resources on that fire that could have been put out when it was a hectare in size…. We got a massive expense in loss of property and insurance claims. That's going to outweigh by far the amount that it would have cost them to put retardant on that hectare-sized fire that day.”

Findlay said he is grateful for the help he received from volunteers in the emergency centre when he and his family were evacuated.

“[Volunteers] were working long hours there for free to take care of us going in and giving us our food, clothing and food, clothing and accommodation. They were so good,” Jeff said. “For two weeks we lived at the Delta Hotel, which it's like, wow, that was very generous of the province and emergency centre to put us up for that amount of time.”

However, during that time, Findlay said it was difficult to not hear any information or news about his property.

“You couldn't find out about your house. You didn't know the status of what was burnt or not,” he said. “And even to this day, like four weeks later, nobody's phoned us. I know our structure is gone because I'm able to get in to feed Poomba, our pig, but we wouldn't know.”

Jeff and Crystal Findlay's pig, Poomba, miraculously survived the McDougall Creek wildfire.

Image Credit: Jeff Findlay

So far, Findlay and his wife Crystal have only received one official message notifying them that their property “suffered partial or complete damage.” They know their home was destroyed in the fire.

“The other frustration is our insurance adjusters are not able to get in there and start the insurance process. It's been a month. It's going to take a year to rebuild stuff. And we're not even in there in the insurance process yet because our insurance adjusters aren't allowing to do the assessment on the properties,” he said.

Jeff and Crystal Findlay hope to be allowed back onto their property to rebuild after wildfires ruined their home.

Image Credit: Jeff Findlay

“But we don't even know when we're going to be back in. And a lot of us, 80% of us in the neighbourhood have lost our homes. That's a huge amount of people that are displaced," Findlay said. "Rent in Kelowna is skyrocketing… if you have the living out expenses covered, that's going to get burnt through in no time at all. It's not going to last that long.

"This is money that just seems to be a waste because we need to get back to our properties to get it assessed so we can actually do something in the rebuilding process."

Stewart told iNFOnews.ca that he empathizes with the Bear Creek residents.

“I'm extremely frustrated,” Stewart said. “I saw how important communication was during the 2003 wildfires that affected Kelowna and I found that over in this area (West Kelowna)…lack of communication was paramount in terms of helping people.

“In this case, I think the regional district has a lot of answering to do. They're ultimately the responsible one. It's not (BC) Wildfire Service and it's not (Emergency Management BC). They help support local government in doing these things… I mean, with these people now 26, 27 days out of their properties, I can't imagine why we can't at least get them back in and do an assessment, even on a basis where it's limited.”

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