Lake Okanagan Resort Wildfire, Facebook post
Image Credit: Tony Roberts, Facebook
November 12, 2024 - 7:00 AM
The McDougall Creek wildfire destroyed Lake Okanagan Resort in 2023, and more than a year later many timeshare owners still don’t know what’s going on with their property or whether they will get any compensation.
Trevor McGugan owns a timeshare in Lake Okanagan Resort and said the mystery about what is happening with the resort, and his financial stake in it, has weighed on him over the past year.
“Frustrating doesn't even come close. Stressful,” he said.
McGugan has about $20,000 invested in a timeshare with 20 years left on the agreement. There were as many as 2,000 timeshare owners at the time of the wildfire.
The holding company that owns Lake Okanagan Resort ignored requests from comment from iNFOnews.ca after the fire and hasn't responded to request made for this article. The resort hasn't responded to McGugan either.
He doesn’t know what’s happening with the resort other than some posts in a social media group that say some work to clear rubble from the site has begun.
And he has questions. He doesn't know what kind of fire insurance there was, what kind of records the resort still has after the fire, where the resort owner is, and how the government views the timeshare owners' stake in the resort.
A Vancouver-based lawyer, who is familiar with the laws around timeshares and the situation at Lake Okanagan Resort, said it’s complicated. The case is even more complicated since the resort’s owners haven’t publicly provided timeshare owners with any information. The lawyer asked to remain anonymous since they aren’t allowed to solicit clients through the media.
“They have to find out if the (resort) owner, and the insurance company are willing to assist. What's the liability of the insurance company in terms of the fire? ... They have to review that,” they said. “From there they would be able to gauge what interest the timeshare owners themselves would have.”
READ MORE: Legal action likely solution for thousands of Lake Okanagan Resort timeshare owners
There are a variety of different agreements throughout the resort. Some timeshare owners are in the same situation as McGugan, while others have 99 year leases, and some agreements are governed by strata councils.
“It's very, very complex the way it is set up,” the lawyer said.
Residents are in the same situation they were in a year ago with radio silence from the resort owner, and their only recourse is hiring a lawyer to take legal action.
“If you were to go through the hundreds of comments, you'll see that probably hundreds of different owners contacted lawyers over the years,” McGugan said.
“Most people end up just giving up.”
Legal action is expensive and time consuming but he said some timeshare owners are still holding onto hope.
“We appreciate the media coverage and still hope for justice and resolution,” he said.
It’s unclear whether the resort has reached agreement with any of the people impacted.
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