BC Fires

[swestrup]

Fires have been raging throughout British Columbia for the past several weeks, and it has been of some concern for me as my folks live in Kelowna in Central BC. Up till now they've been lucky and the closest fire has been over 200 km away, but all that changed last Thursday. A new fire sprang up in the area and last Friday it jumped the firebreaks and started burning the town my folks live in.

I've since talked to my Mom, and she's taking all quite calmly. She's packed all of her precious memorabilia so that she can evacuate on a moment's notice. She would be more than willing to see the house burn since its fully insured and she's been trying to sell it for over a year now. My Dad has taken the lazy course and declared that there's no chance of the fire reaching them, so why should he do anything?

Typical. All my life my dad has been a superb bad example. Almost everything I am is because of my efforts to not end up like him.

Anyway, I just checked the news from the Kelowna firewatch website and they've decreased the level of the alerts because the wind shifted last night. On the other hand I just got a note from my folks saying they are now in Vernon because the sight of a huge wall of fire advancing on their house unnerved them, reduced alert or not. Only time will tell if they're house was damaged or not.

Comments

[sps.livejournal.com]

Ook I say. Ook.

[denizsarikaya.livejournal.com]

Eesh. Best wishes for your family's health and so forth.

[azrhey.livejournal.com]

Hey !

I wasn't much aware of the fire of BC until this morning when someone else posted about it. I have been fairly disconnected from world news latetly ( besides portuguese news that I have dumped on my nail box each morning ) as I only have net access at work and tv here has more important things to talk about , Like Kobe Bryant's dick and Arnold's tooth paste brand ( i am NOT kidding ! )
I am really sorry to hear about your family being caught close to fires.
I can really relate to that as my father's parents village burnt down two weeks ago in Portugal ( noone int eh family still has property there but it was a "happy memory place" ) and now the fire are approaching the village where they do have the house. Grand'pa already stated that he would burn down with the house and there is no way he was going to evacuate. Grand'ma proposed to beat some sence into him with Cattle branding iron thingy !

I am _trying to joke.
This year already over 418 000 hectares burnt down ( for a country that is roughly 90 000 km2 ... ) , 18 deaths and over 200 family w/o a home...

And the saddest thing is that the majority of those fires were criminal in origin.

500 and 900 year old forests being burnt down criminally...

Sometimes, sometimes for a brief moment I question my anti-death-penalty views...

http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/viewrecord?25700

THis picture makes me fo sad..and so furious...

So yeah, I hope your family will be Sti and hope a good raining falls on all that...