A forest fire threatens one of several structures at Seclusion Bay near Kelowna, B.C. Monday July 12, 2010.Darren Handschuh / The Canadian Press
With a wildfire raging out of control, two RCMP officers arrived at a house in Seclusion Bay, near Peachland, B.C., and banged on its window, trying to roust an 87-year-old woman sleeping on a couch inside.
When the woman didn't respond Monday, Constable Ryan Routley and Auxiliary Constable Greg Barnhardt let themselves into the house through an unlocked door.
"I pretty much yelled at her, 'There's a fire, you need to get out,' " Constable Routley said. The woman was dazed but managed to get herself ready to leave.
"At that point, the fire was probably 20, 30 feet from the house," he said.
The officers tried to get the woman into their police cruiser, but they were engulfed by smoke and couldn't see beyond the hood of the car. Afraid they would drive off the narrow access road and down the steep embankment, they returned to the house.
"I couldn't breathe any more and all I could see was smoke," Constable Barnhardt said.
Abandoning their car, the officers assisted the woman, who refused to be carried, down a rough path over rocks and logs, towards Okanagan Lake below, where a boat arrived to pick them up.
"As we were getting into the boat, it looked like the garage next to where my police vehicle was caught fire," Constable Routley said.
The fire also damaged his vehicle. "The back of it is a little bit melted," he said. "My main priority was getting her out of there. I wasn't concerned about the vehicle at all."
While the woman lost her garage to the blaze, her house survived, though another house in the area was destroyed, along with its garage and a boat.
While the two officers were helping the elderly woman, Constable Denise Bendfield went to nearby Seclusion Bay Resort. As she drove in, the fire had already spread to both sides of the road.
She went door to door, "telling [the guests]to just drop their stuff, grab their people and get to their vehicles and depart the area," she said.
But a few minutes later, the first vehicles returned, saying burning trees had fallen onto the road.
Constable Bendfield said she radioed her supervisor and asked to be evacuated by boat. Two police boats and a fire boat were already en route to keep curious boaters away from the area where helicopters were swooping in to fill their water buckets.
Constable Bendfield said she managed to get about 30 guests to the water's edge.
"While we were waiting we could see the fire advance on us and coming over the ridge on the hill above us," she said, adding the scene was "a little bit scary."
By the time the boats arrived, embers and ash were starting to fall on the evacuees. Constable Bendfield said that despite the frightening circumstances, the guest were "really co-operative."
"Most stayed very calm," she said. "There was one little girl that was really upset. She was having a hard time, she had been through the same thing last year."
The same resort was evacuated last July when the 300-hectare Glenrossa fire broke out in West Kelowna, forcing 2,200 people to leave the area.
Monday's fire was much smaller. It grew to 30 hectares before firefighters managed to contain it. A total of 67 evacuees have registered at a centre in West Kelowna. The fire is still active, though appears to mostly be smouldering under ground.
While firefighters continue to mop up the fire and keep an eye out for hot spots and flare-ups, the section of Highway 97 between Peachland and West Kelowna has been reopened to traffic with speed restrictions through the fire zone.
A state of emergency and evacuation orders issued Monday remained in effect as of late Tuesday afternoon.
Special to The Globe and Mail