The McDougall Creek wildfire burns on the mountainside above houses in West Kelowna, B.C., on Friday, August 18, 2023.

Image Credit: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

Dawn Van Zant says she was frustrated about the lack of FireSmart information she could find ever since she moved to Killiney Beach on the North Westside of Okanagan Lake last year.

But her frustration rose to terror on Aug. 17 when the McDougall Creek Wildfire tore through Traders Cove south of her and then raced north.

“I started to get all these messages from my daughter-in-law and my daughter, who are on social media, that the fire was building and I saw car after car on Westside Road,” Van Zant told iNFOnews.ca. “For awhile it was bumper to bumper on Westside Road and I started to really wonder what was happening. You get this unnerving feeling that everybody is leaving so should I be leaving?

“I hadn’t got an alert on anything. I asked my neighbour and she said that she’d signed up for everything and she had just got a notice that certain areas were on alert. Then I started hearing Traders Cove was on fire and people were running down to the lake. My first reaction was, people are being dramatic. That’s just crazy. That’s not true because nobody’s telling me officially any of that.”

READ MORE: Shuswap vs West Kelowna: Two entirely different ways of communicating about fires

Van Zant bought in Killiney beach in March 2022, less than a year after fire tore through 75 or more homes in that area. She moved there from Tsawwassen to be closer to her children and grandchildren.

“When I purchased up here, the first thing I did was start researching about getting a rooftop sprinkler,” Van Zant said. “I couldn’t find a lot of resources so I hired a guy to do the property FireSmart. He cut everything back and put in a fire line for me. I asked him: ‘Can you recommend a rooftop sprinkler company?’ so he built a customized one for me.”

“I just thought it was common sense that was the first thing that you do as an owner when you live in an area where 85 homes had burned down. I was surprised that it wasn’t commonplace up here.

“My concern and frustration, as a new-comer, was I had to do all of my own research. I kind of feel, if you’re moving into a community like this, there should be more information and resources. I shouldn’t have to seek out that much and look for myself.”

On Aug. 17 of this year she drove to Vernon for groceries and noticed things had changed by the time she got back home that afternoon.

“I was sitting on the deck and I started to see this mass exodus of traffic and I saw the smoke was different, that it was behind me and on the lake and behind me in the hills as well,” Van Zant said.

Then all the messages came in from her children about the fire taking off.

“I’m not on social media all the time and, you think, that’s crazy,” Van Zant said. “Then you start to hear that Lake Okanagan Resort is on fire and that its coming down the road and, again you’re not hearing anything official. You’re just hearing it from people on boats taking photographs and videos.

“My kids both called me and said: ‘Mom, get out of there! It’s coming fast and you don’t know how bad it’s going to be!’ I live alone and they’re like, you should just leave.

“I’m like, 'I’ve not been told to leave. I think I’m fine.' By midnight they’re saying: ‘Mom, all we’re seeing are these terrible images of things burning down your road and it’s coming fast so just go. What, do you want to leave at four in the morning or five in the morning? Go now!”

She finally did join the exodus and headed north to Vernon then down to her son’s apartment in the Rutland neighbourhood of Kelowna. Given the heavy smoke in the air, she continued down Highway 33 to Rock Creek then off to stay with her daughter in Tsawwassen.

In the end, the fire did not travel as far north as Killiney Beach, which was never put on evacuation alert. That didn’t stop her from being terrified as Westside Road was clogged with traffic fleeing the flames.

Unlike the rest of the Thompson-Okanagan, there is no local emergency alert system that sends detailed messages to people’s phones so social media and calls from family were her only sources of information.

READ MORE: How were you alerted to evacuate for Central Okanagan wildfires?

Not that the messages that were given out through the Central Okanagan Emergency Operations Centre would have helped since they never did say where the fire was burning. It just posted lists of streets on evacuation orders or alerts. Officials have routinely declined to answer questions from the media about anything other than the current 'emergency' until it's over.

“My situation is great,” Van Zant said. “I’m only inconvenienced and I was scared, which is nothing in the scheme of things. I’m not doing this to try to get attention but I think the matter needs attention.”

That attention includes the fact that campers fleeing Bear Creek Provincial Park, if they went to emergency centres, were told those were only for permanent residents and they should just go home.

Along with Bear Creek there are large campgrounds at Fintry Provincial Park and the Evely forest service site along the west side of Okanagan Lake.

“There are a lot of people here that they need to think about,” Van Zant said. “We take their money. We invite them up here. Just because somebody has a tent or an RV doesn’t mean they know how to deal with something like this.

“If you’re camping in an area, there should be a plan. Can you image if you’re not used to the area and you’re driving in the dark and you’re being told there’s an emergency centre open then they say: ‘We can’t help you. You’re on your own.’

“We’re living in a fire zone. Everything should be planned for. What I saw, as a new person, is that I got more information from social media than I did from any (official) resources and that there wasn’t really a plan for a lot of this.”

Talking to her neighbours, who lived through their own disaster two years ago, it seems nothing has changed on the communications front.

“What they don’t understand, and what they should understand, is the less you tell people and don’t explain why, it creates that sense of: ‘What are they keeping from us? What are they not telling us?’”

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