Heather Reis lost her home to the McDougall Creek wildfire.

Image Credit: Heather Reis, Submitted.

Heather Reis spent hours running from three different fires as the McDougall Creek wildfire closed in on her home in Bear Creek. 

On Wednesday Aug. 16, Heather was on her first day of vacation since April. She was playing with her grandchildren at the McDonalds play place in Rutland when she looked at her phone to see that there was a fire in the Rose Valley area, close to her home.

“I managed to go to bed and sleep soundly that night,” she told iNFOnews.ca. “I wake up the next morning and see that we're on evac alert and I'm like, oh. I was nervous all morning, cleaning, cleaning, cleaning, you know, doing that nervous type of work. (I was) getting the cats somewhere where I could grab them if I had to.

“I remember sitting under the gazebo out (in my garden) just waiting and then someone said evacuation is going to be called right after lunch. So, I grabbed…a few things that I wanted. Oh God, I wish I would have grabbed more. I was in a weird zone that this wasn't going to happen. I grabbed my three dogs. One was 140 pounds, two were 60 pounds and two cats in my car.”

Heather then headed over to a relative’s house on Clifton Avenue in Kelowna with the rest of her family. They sat outside and watched their home from across the lake as the fire drew closer.

“When it crested (the mountain) my heart went into my stomach,” she said.

“Then it got worse and worse and worse,” she said. “My son looked over to the neighbours and the fire actually jumped! A whole tree was on fire, two houses over. Panic, again.”

For the second time that day, Heather and her family scrambled to pack their belongings and pets in a car to escape the fires again.

“We're packing up again, loading three slobbering dogs and two cats into the car. It's 10 o'clock. I'm older. I'm tired,” she said. “I'm driving all the way to Lake Country because (our family were) there." 

Unfortunately, by the time they arrived, the fires had started in Lake Country as well. 

“We get to Lake Country and the fire seems to have followed us. Embers as big as bricks were falling on cars. Then Lake Country's on fire, and so it’s like PTSD for like two weeks after that from running. We couldn't get away,” she said. “It seemed that we couldn't get away from the fire.”

Thankfully, Heather and her family were able to get emergency accommodation at the Delta Hotel.

“It was the weirdest, surreal experience,” she said. “For a couple of days, we didn't know if our house was there or not.”

A friend of the family shared video footage of the damage with them.

“One night I remember looking and I'm like, that's a shadow there, our house is there! Our house is there! And so, we had hope,” she said. “And then, I think two or three days later, we got confirmation that it definitely was not there. It was absolutely nothing but a white pile of rubble.”

Heather and her family got this information from a friend who saw their burnt property and informed them. Officially, she waited a month before she received any notification of the state of her home.

Before the fire, Heather and her husband had been living in a newly renovated basement suite, with her son and daughter-in-law living in the house above.

The basement had been a long-term renovation project for her husband, Vince. However, shortly after it was finished, the suite flooded.

“We worked really hard to finish this basement and put this house together. It's a pretty humble abode and me and my husband… finished the basement suite and got the permit done on July 31. That same night the house flooded,” she said. “I cried harder that night (than the night of fire) because we just got the permit accepted.”

Distracted by the flooding, Heather and her husband did not notify their insurance company in time that the basement was now a finished suite. Then the McDougall Creek fire came in.

“It was surreal,” she said. “We are gonna be out of luck I think in trying to raise any money for the basement suite that was fully finished… It was just days before that I was gonna call insurance to say ‘hey, we need to include this fully finished basement suite in our insurance policy’. But before I had a chance to do that, the place burned.”

For Heather, more needs to be done to prevent fire from happening like this again in the future.

“I just don't think that enough folks were really prepared enough if this was to happen,” she said.

“It's sad that our life now is not the same.”

More information about Heather and her family can be found on their GoFundMe.com page. 

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