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

Image Credit: SUBMITTED

In just one day, the McDougall Creek wildfire destroyed Crystal and Jeff Findlay's home and ranch in West Kelowna. 

Crystal is a teacher and Jeff is a retired RCMP officer who own The Broken Rail Ranch, a trail riding business. The ranch is situated close to Bear Creek Provincial Park, where the Findlay's offered horseback rides along historic mining routes and trails that overlook Okanagan Lake.

The couple bought the ranch in foreclosure and slowly accumulated a herd of rescued horses. For years they welcomed volunteers from across the world to help them rebuild the property and retrain the mistreated and neglected animals. 

“Everything was handmade,” Crystal told iNFOnews.ca. “The fences, the buildings, it was all from second hand materials and built by our friends, family and volunteers.”

On Aug. 16, the ranch was put on evacuation alert. A routine practice for the couple who have lived in the Rose Valley area since 2015.

“It was a small fire, quite far away from us. A couple of our staff were a little worried and we reassured them, ‘don’t worry this is the Okanagan, we get fires all the time, it’s not a big deal, it’s not going to reach us, we’re going to be OK,'" Crystal said.

Jeff and Crystal Findlay lost their West Kelowna home and ranch in the McDougall Creek wildfire.

Image Credit: SUBMITTED

On the afternoon of Aug. 17, the couple were warned by neighbours who had connections in the forestry industry that an evacuation was inevitable.

“It’s a huge process to evacuate all of our animals. So, I said to my husband, 'just wait, just have the trailers on standby, let’s not do this until we actually get the order,'” Crystal said. “Then, we got the order.”

The couple were overwhelmed as friends and strangers flooded into the ranch to offer them assistance.

“All of a sudden, like within half an hour, we had a line-up of horse trailers going out of our ranch and down the road. It was pretty incredible,” Jeff said.

“I stood there, and I watched as trailer after trailer after trailer started to pull in. Volunteers showed up with their trucks and they just said, 'what can we do? Put us to work.'” Crystal said, tearing up. “It was one of those magical moments where you feel so loved and humbled by the people around you and the people that are willing to support you."

The volunteers and staff quickly went to work loading the horses into trailers, as the wildfire drew closer. They have a lot of rescue horses who aren't accustomed to trailering so that was a concern. Jeff said he had planned to take the horses that wouldn’t load to a nearby cherry orchard, where there was plenty of space between the trees. He would wait there with them until the fire was under control.

West Kelowna's Jeff and Crystal Findlay sat down for interview, Tuesday, Aug. 21, 2023, about their home and ranch which was destroyed by the McDougall Creek wildfire.

Image Credit: Georgina Whitehouse

“Now we know that area is completely burnt," Crystal said, overcome with emotion. "So, without our volunteers and everybody that showed up, if we hadn’t got all those horses loaded, I don’t know if I would still have my husband today,” she said. 

By 5 p.m. the horses and remaining staff were evacuated.

“We could see the fire behind us, on the other side of a hill. You couldn’t see flames yet, but you could see the air was hot and red and black. And it was so intense, this fire was looming over us. It looked as though the air itself was melting,” Crystal said. “And it was just growing. I looked at that and it was… that was the first time I looked, and I thought, 'I think we might lose our home.' It was powerful and terrifying,” Jeff rested his hand on her knee as she spoke. 

With the fire cresting the mountain behind their property, they turned their attention to the possessions inside their home.

“I was so overwhelmed and exhausted from the day. I didn’t grab very much,” Crystal said. “You start waking up in the middle of the night now, suddenly realizing that special item that you had stored.

"One of the things I really was upset about was our trail riding sign. One of our first volunteers had painted it for us and I felt like it really reflected who we are as a family and our beautiful Okanagan. It had an eagle and the Ogopogo and the beautiful lake and horses. My husband had placed Canadian flags and a Ukrainian flag in support of Ukraine against the sign. And I just thought, 'well, we'll never get that back.'

"One of the first pictures we received from the firefighters was a picture that our trail riding sign was still standing with our flag still flying,” she said. “So, we've had a couple of little miracles in this process.”

Jeff said he had a shop with every tool he'd ever need, but he had been trying to clean it up.

"And I kind of laughed at myself the other day and went, well, it's kind of cleaned up now," he said. "So, I don't have the burden of having to sift through old T-shirts and my collection of ball caps."

"We just left thinking in the back of our mind, thinking that somehow, maybe we'd come back and get it,” Jeff said. “By the time I left I knew it was going to be gone because I could see the fire coming.

"It was scary as hell. I didn't go back in the house and grab my stuff. I didn't even grab the two bags of tools I had sitting there. I could have easily put those in the truck, and I didn't do it. Now I don't have a tool to my name. Like, I don't even have a screwdriver."

Although they had been able to successfully evacuate their twenty horses, four goats, two bunnies, four cats and two dogs, they had been unable to move Poomba and Wilbur, their beloved pigs.

On Sunday, Aug. 19, the couple received images from firefighters showing Poomba standing on a singular patch of unburnt land, being fed granola bars by firemen.

“I wish there was more we could have done. But our little Poomba, who survived, she really is a miracle pig. Between our sign and our miracle pig, she's brought us a lot of hope about resilience and about survival,” Crystal said.

“One of our friends from Valhalla Helicopters, Blair Savage, flew his helicopter over and did an airdrop of granola bars to her so she could have something to eat." Jeff laughed. "Yeah. Poomba the miracle pig… she's becoming kind of an icon I think.”

The couple are waiting to be allowed access to their property. But the footage and photographs from helicopters and firefighters have made it clear that the house and most of the land is completely destroyed.

“Hopefully one of these days we're going to get back in there and start rebuilding,” Jeff said.

Crystal said they are going to plant trees and make their property beautiful again.

“There were old structures from the 1800s. There were beautiful trees. There was a gorgeous old sour cherry orchard and it's all gone,” she said.

The trails are no longer safe so they expect their business to be closed for a least a year.

Crystal explained the sadness she feels for her husband, who worked tirelessly to renovate and build the ranch.

"At the end of the day his body aches and he's stressed and tired, but he still gets up the next day and works on the ranch. So for him especially, losing this property was like losing eight years of his life," she said.

Despite their loss, the couple said they are inspired by the community around them.

“We are just so blown away by the good people that are out there. People are so willing to literally lend you the shirt off their back and their time and their resources and their kind words and everything else. There's been a lot of division in society I've felt, but recently we've seen that people are still strong and people still share a strong sense of community,” Crystal said.

More information about the ranch can be found on their Instagram and Facebook pages. 

To contact a reporter for this story, email Georgina Whitehouse or call 250-864-7494 or email the editor. You can also submit photos, videos or news tips to the newsroom and be entered to win a monthly prize draw.

We welcome your comments and opinions on our stories but play nice. We won't censor or delete comments unless they contain off-topic statements or links, unnecessary vulgarity, false facts, spam or obviously fake profiles. If you have any concerns about what you see in comments, email the editor in the link above. SUBSCRIBE to our awesome newsletter here.

News from © iNFOnews, 2023