Lake Okanagan Resort Wildfire was ravaged by the McDougall Creek Wildfire but people found out about it on social media long before emergency officials made if public.

Image Credit: Tony Roberts, Facebook

People impacted by the McDougall Creek wildfire in and around West Kelowna have been frustrated by a severe lack of information from emergency officials.

It’s too late to fix the communication problems for this wildfire, but one of the key people behind the Central Okanagan emergency operation centre has committed to advocate for change.

“I take your point that we probably could have put out more standardized communications,” Paul Gipps, CAO for the City of West Kelowna, told iNFOnews.ca. “One of the things I’ll challenge the team on is: Can we have some sort of checklist of things that the media wants to know about, with any given fire, and how much can we put in there under each one of these headings?”

The media, which works on behalf of the public, would like better information so the affected people can get a clearer picture of what is going on during a wildfire, rather than relying on rumours and hearsay, often on social media.

READ MORE: Angry McDougall Creek wildfire evacuees give local MLA an earful

One example of the shortcomings of the communication process is there has yet to be a clear outline of what areas were most impacted by the wildfire.

West Kelowna fire chief Jason Brolund, for example, said major infrastructure like Rose Valley Elementary School, Rose Valley Fire Hall and the new water treatment plant had been saved. That was at a news conference held Aug. 18, the morning after the fire ripped through the Westside.

To this day, there is no public accounting of how many homes were destroyed in what areas of the city, such as Rose Valley or nearby West Kelowna Estates.

“We probably haven’t broken it down that way yet because it’s all one city,” Gipps told iNFOnews.ca, Sept. 14. “We’ve got 69 homes that were fully lost through all those areas. They range along those properties from Bear Creek all through that area. Of course, intermixed with Westbank First Nation.”

That was the first mention that 69 homes were actually destroyed. Prior to that, the only information released was that there was damage to 189 properties.

Gipps said another 30 structures were damaged.

He could only speak to the impacts on West Kelowna.

Part of the problem with an accurate count, he said, is that some of the buildings are in rural areas and some structures were built without permits so it’s hard to tell what existed there before the fire.

A bigger concern for evacuated residents is why they can’t get in to see their homes after almost a month (although more evacuation orders were downgraded to alerts last night and today and Westside Road was reopened yesterday).

“Each neighbourhood is unique in its needs,” Gipps said. “We need water for fire protection and, do we have all the water protection in the neighbourhoods that we’ve always had? Some of it, they only have wells. That’s not within the city’s authority. That’s a provincial requirement so I don’t think that’s anything that we’re holding back.

“We’re working with BC Hydro to get as many (residents) put back as quickly as possible. Letting people back into neighbourhoods that don’t have hydro where there are multiple losses is a bit of a challenge.

“As soon as you open up the roads to the public everybody’s going in there. Not everybody can stay in their home because they have no power. They have no security systems. They have nothing there and they can’t stay there because there’s no power. There’s no kitchen. Things like that.

"Then we only have so many RCMP that can patrol certain areas at certain times so it’s a real balance and it’s not cut and dried. The fire is spread over several kilometres all up and down Westside Road.”

That may be, but the emergency operations centre has not provided things like photographs or videos to show the damage that needs to be repaired before people can return home. And no details have been offered about things like what areas have wells or need electricity at water booster stations.

“There are a lot of power lines down,” Gipps said. “A lot of poles missing. A lot of trees still burning inside their root system and hollowing. All those things bear into how quickly can we get those people back? How safe can we make it?

“For Hydro, they have lines laying all across the road. To push them to single-lane alternating traffic will just further delay everybody else so we said, OK, how quickly can you get this going?”

READ MORE: Lack of power behind delay getting West Kelowna evacuees home: MLA

He gave an example of evacuees lining up to get back into one area but a tree was burning at the edge of the road so it had to be felled before they could drive by.

All that helps to explain the delay in getting people back home and there is no question that this was an extraordinary fire that moved very fast and overwhelmed emergency responses.

READ MORE: Mass wildfire evacuations force Central Okanagan emergency operations to rethink system

A major factor may be the structure of the emergency operations centre management and the fact the wildfire spread over five government jurisdictions: West Kelowna, Westbank First Nation and the rural Central Okanagan regional district area north of the city. Then Kelowna and Lake Country when embers from the fire blew across the lake.

That means the person in charge of the emergency operations centre changes. Gipps was in charge for the first few days but he has his own job to do so Sally Ginter, CAO of the regional district, took over for awhile, then others.

“We have a group of people that run an emergency operations centre from every jurisdiction,” Gipps said. “I know the CAOs are there and ask regularly: ‘How can we do this? How can we do that?’ We try to be consistent, primarily, amongst all of us and meeting each other’s needs.”

That management by committee structure may be part of the problem with communications.

“That’s part of it,” Gipps said. “The sheer volume of what was going on was very significant. I’ve been a director for many years on many fires and emergencies and this was a very difficult time for us. Lots of loss happened so fast and it was very complex and we’ve still got complex issues going on there.”

From his perspective, everyone involved in emergency operations is working hard and trying their best to get people home as quickly as possible.

“We worked seven days a week and many people in the emergency operations centre lost their places and don’t have a place to stay and they’re still in there working,” he said. “We care a lot. We try to figure out how to get people back and try to balance out all the requirements for safety and security.”

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