A fire destroyed a tent at the homeless encampment along the Okanagan Rail Trail in Kelowna, Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2023.
Image Credit: SUBMITTED
October 19, 2023 - 11:54 AM
A fire destroyed a tent at the City of Kelowna's supervised camping area for homeless people last night.
A reader submitted a video to iNFOnews.ca that was filmed at about 7:15 p.m. yesterday, Oct. 18.
“It was burnt out by the time we got there,” Kelowna Fire Department Platoon Captain Micah Volk told iNFOnews.ca. “The crews extinguished some smouldering remains and there were no injuries as far as we know."
About 100 gallons of water was poured on the burned tent, just to make sure it was out, Volk said.
The person who had been living in the tent told fire crews he didn't know how the fire started.
“During the last week or two (bylaw officers) have done some cleanup at that site and they’ve done some tent spacing so they’re basically in a 12 by 12 space for all the residents there,” Volk said.
That effort was not appreciated by all the residents while it was happening but may have contributed to this fire not spreading.
READ MORE: Cleanup of rail trail homeless camp in Kelowna has residents scrambling
“The intent of that is, if one tent catches on fire it doesn’t spread to others and we have a bigger incident,” Volk said. “So, they’re thinking that kind of approach has been kind of successful in not having small fires spread into bigger ones.”
There are more than 100 tents in the encampment that are checked to make sure flammable devices like propane heaters are not being used.
“Between bylaws and ourselves, we’re down there quite a bit but we’re not down there all the time,” Volk said. “It’s an ongoing challenge.”
The city announced last week it will build tiny houses over the next few months as a partial solution to housing some of of the people living without homes in the city.
READ MORE: 120 tiny houses planned for homeless people in Kelowna
Where and when those will be open has not yet been announced.
There were an estimated 265 people sleeping rough in the city in September so fire and bylaw officers are also checking other sites and trying to make sure no structures that are more permanent are being set up.
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