The Canadian Press
Tue, August 15, 2023
VANCOUVER — When Nicky Fried and her husband arrived in Vancouver from South Africa more than 30 years ago, they didn't need an air conditioner.
Now they have two, she said on Tuesday as she enjoyed an iced coffee and shade outside a Cambie Street café.
“I don’t think it’s that wildly expensive. They do work and you can sleep in comfort, and you can spend your time indoors in comfort,” said Fried.
Her husband, Hirschel Wasserman, added that air conditioning is "no longer a luxury; it has become a necessity."
Most of southern B.C. is broiling in a heat wave as temperatures knock down records in some areas of the province that were set almost a century ago.
On Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, an outreach team for the Union Gospel Mission has been working to ensure people are aware and are prepared to cope with the heat spike.
Mission spokeswoman Nicole Mucci said those who are experiencing mental illness, homelessness or who have chronic health conditions are most at risk of illness and death during hot weather.
She said staff have been handing out water, hats and sunscreen and are encouraging people living on the Downtown Eastside to seek out cooling stations during the day and stay in shelters at night.
BC Emergency Health Services said paramedics were called out to 28 heat-related events on Sunday and Monday, compared with nine on the same two days the week earlier.
B.C.'s Ministry of Emergency Management has said heat wave won't be a repeat of the 2021 heat dome, which claimed more than 600 lives, but it warns people to take precautions to stay out of the heat, drink water and limit activity.
The coroner's report from the 2021 event said most of the deaths happened indoors and were adults above 60 years old who didn't have air conditioning. It said the number of deaths for those living in poverty was "lower than may have been expected."
"It is important to learn from the people living in those areas, such as those living in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver," the report said. "Lived experience must inform community strategies for prevention from planning through implementation."
Mucci agreed, noting it is also important to remember that many people in areas such as the Downtown Eastside live in affordable or "precarious" housing, like single rooms, and don't always have access to fans or air conditioning.
She noted the mission's housing team has worked to ensure its shelters are equipped with cooling areas.
Mucci said they've noticed many groups within the community now watch to ensure residents are prepared and protected.
"Whether that's folks who are unhoused, folks who are experiencing addiction, perhaps those with mental illness, or those who are maybe elderly or disabled, and just letting them know that hot weather is coming," she said.
Environment Canada urges people to be aware of heat illnesses and its symptoms, including swelling, rash, cramps, fainting, heat exhaustion, heat stroke and the worsening of some health conditions.
The 10 hottest communities in Canada were all located in British Columbia on Monday and forecasters expected the sizzling temperatures to continue for at least a few more days across the province's Interior.
The Fraser Canyon communities of Lytton and Lillooet both broke the 40 C mark on Monday, with Lytton reaching 41.5 C and Lillooet slightly behind. On Tuesday, the mercury hit 42.1 C in Lytton.
Environment Canada said more than a dozen daily records were set on Tuesday, including 37.5 C in Port Alberni, breaking a benchmark set in 1933, and 30.6 C at Yoho National Park, surpassing a 1930 mark.
The heat is making the situation worse for about 370 wildfires burning in the province. Of those, 145 are considered out of control.
Sarah Budd, an information officer with the BC Wildfire Service, said the greatest risk to the blazes burning in the province will come Thursday when a cold front moves in from the northwest, bringing strong winds, dry lightning and the potential to start more fires, while making the current wildfires worse.
Provincial power utility BC Hydro said Tuesday that it also set a new record for the highest peak hourly demand in August on Monday night.
BC Hydro said in a statement that consumption reached over 8,400 megawatts, with a heat wave usually adding 1,000 megawatts of power use, equal to turning on one million air-conditioning units.
Bulletins from Environment Canada say much of the coastal region will return to seasonal temperatures by Wednesday, but central and southern regions of the province will endure the heat a day or two longer.
— With files from Brieanna Charlebois in Vancouver
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 15, 2023.
Nono Shen, The Canadian Press
A look at British Columbia's heat wave, by the numbers
The Canadian Press
Wed, August 16, 2023
VANCOUVER — A protracted heat wave has settled over the southern half of British Columbia, sending temperatures in some places into the 40s this week.
Here's a look at data associated with the hot spell that began Sunday, provided by Environment Canada. Information is correct as of 5 p.m. Wednesday.
Hottest temperature: 42.2 C at the Lytton climate station on Tuesday
Daily heat records set at B.C. weather stations since Sunday: 48
Hottest temperature at Vancouver International Airport: 26 C on Tuesday
Hottest temperature at Victoria International Airport: 30.5 C on Monday
Hottest temperature in Kelowna: 38.6 C on Tuesday
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 16, 2023.
Two decades later, record wildfires in Kelowna, B.C. are dwarfed by current season
Wed, August 16, 2023
KELOWNA, B.C. — It's been about five years since Jesse Zeman began a summer ritual of boxing up keepsakes and personal effects to ship to relatives because he worried his home in Kelowna, B.C., would burn down.
Eventually, Zeman said he and his wife moved their treasures permanently after the family had to evacuate twice. Now they have a so-called "go box" prepared and they are ready to leave at a moment's notice every summer.
They've had fires start within a few kilometres of their house many times over the years, but Zeman said he looks back to the devastating season in 2003 when friends' homes burned down in what was then considered a catastrophic event, but now is the new norm.
"You only need to get woken up at 11 at night because there's a fire within two kilometres of your house, you only need to do that once to go 'holy smoke, so this is real,'" he said in an interview. "The risk is very high where we live."
As British Columbia grapples with a record-breaking wildfire season, the 20-year anniversary of Kelowna's firestorm brings mixed emotions for those who lived through it, and offers lessons for the present. At the time, the 2003 season was unprecedented in scale, but it has been dwarfed this year by fires that have burned six times more area so far.
On Aug. 16, 2003, a lightning strike sparked a fire near Okanagan Mountain Provincial Park that eventually grew to 250 square kilometres, spurring evacuations of more than 33,000 residents and damaging or destroying more than 200 homes.
Zeman, executive director of the B.C. Wildlife Federation, published a commentary last month decrying what he calls chronic and prolonged underfunding for renewable resource management in the province.
"In 2003, British Columbia got a taste of catastrophic, uncontrollable wildfires and the pall of choking smoke lasting months," Zeman wrote. "We were rightly frightened at the prospect of this apocalyptic new reality."
Zeman said the provincial government has since failed to heed what should have been a wake-up call two decades ago, leading to "fish and wildlife decline, massive uncontrollable wildfires, and widespread drought as the norm."
Retired firefighter Glen Maddess and his wife live in Kelowna, and he remembers seeing the fire as it smouldered in the park that day in 2003.
He recalls going out for a run, struck by how the fire began gradually growing and moving, then later driving down a main street where residents were being evacuated.
"Just seeing the amount of people having to leave and take their belongings with them, the valuable belongings because they couldn't take everything, and it's sort of 'whoa, this is serious,' and I've been in the business for a long time," he said.
Even after decades in the firefighting business, Maddess said he was in awe of the "magnitude of the seriousness" of the fire.
"It's interesting 20 years later that we're facing basically the same problems as we did before," he said.
Maddess was later tapped to help prepare a report on the 2003 wildfire season for the provincial government entitled "Firestorm," authored by former Manitoba Premier Gary Filmon.
"We have learned some lessons," he said.
There's now a greater pool of firefighting expertise to draw from provincially, nationally, and internationally, he said.
Maddess said there's also a greater depth of knowledge about how to respond to interurban wildland fires, where residential development abuts natural landscapes chock full of fuels that feed the now yearly blazes.
The Filmon report said that the 2003 wildfire season scorched over 2,600 square kilometres across B.C., at the time a record amount. So far this season, more than 16,000 square kilometres have burned.
Former Kelowna fire chief Gerry Zimmermann has had a lot of time to reflect on the 2003 disaster, and he's now just thankful it wasn't worse as wildfire seasons have only grown in intensity since.
"When I look what's happening around the world right now like Hawaii and places like that, it makes ours look kind of small," he said.
Zimmermann, who's now retired from firefighting, said it's hard to assess whether the 2003 wildfires were a glimpse into a future with unheeded lessons dooming the province to repeat history.
But he said a few things have improved, especially communications with the public through the media, which at the time was "terrible" before they decided to change course.
"We were giving information out as soon as we had it," he said. "That was very, very successful. That's what got us through."
Zimmermann said "jurisdictional boundaries" were a hurdle back then, too. The fire in Okanagan Mountain Provincial Park was out of the Kelowna Fire Department's purview.
"What we had decided shortly after this fire, one of the main things was that if something came in, it didn't matter where it was, we were gonna go deal with it," he said. "I don't know whether they're still doing that or not, but the secret to these things is hitting it as hard and as fast with everything you can right off the bat and keep it small."
Zimmermann said firefighters were dealing with flames hundreds of feet high at some points, but a miraculous moment from one scary night sticks in his mind.
"We had guys trapped and we were having a heck of a time," he said. "When it was at its worst, the skies opened up and it started raining."
The rain that night, he said, gave firefighters a leg up "and after that, things got progressively better."
"We could have lost a good part of the city and a lot of good people and a little bit of help from upstairs," he said, "got us through this thing."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 16, 2023.
Darryl Greer, The Canadian Press
The Canadian Press
Wed, August 16, 2023
VANCOUVER — A protracted heat wave has settled over the southern half of British Columbia, sending temperatures in some places into the 40s this week.
Here's a look at data associated with the hot spell that began Sunday, provided by Environment Canada. Information is correct as of 5 p.m. Wednesday.
Hottest temperature: 42.2 C at the Lytton climate station on Tuesday
Daily heat records set at B.C. weather stations since Sunday: 48
Hottest temperature at Vancouver International Airport: 26 C on Tuesday
Hottest temperature at Victoria International Airport: 30.5 C on Monday
Hottest temperature in Kelowna: 38.6 C on Tuesday
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 16, 2023.
Two decades later, record wildfires in Kelowna, B.C. are dwarfed by current season
Wed, August 16, 2023
KELOWNA, B.C. — It's been about five years since Jesse Zeman began a summer ritual of boxing up keepsakes and personal effects to ship to relatives because he worried his home in Kelowna, B.C., would burn down.
Eventually, Zeman said he and his wife moved their treasures permanently after the family had to evacuate twice. Now they have a so-called "go box" prepared and they are ready to leave at a moment's notice every summer.
They've had fires start within a few kilometres of their house many times over the years, but Zeman said he looks back to the devastating season in 2003 when friends' homes burned down in what was then considered a catastrophic event, but now is the new norm.
"You only need to get woken up at 11 at night because there's a fire within two kilometres of your house, you only need to do that once to go 'holy smoke, so this is real,'" he said in an interview. "The risk is very high where we live."
As British Columbia grapples with a record-breaking wildfire season, the 20-year anniversary of Kelowna's firestorm brings mixed emotions for those who lived through it, and offers lessons for the present. At the time, the 2003 season was unprecedented in scale, but it has been dwarfed this year by fires that have burned six times more area so far.
On Aug. 16, 2003, a lightning strike sparked a fire near Okanagan Mountain Provincial Park that eventually grew to 250 square kilometres, spurring evacuations of more than 33,000 residents and damaging or destroying more than 200 homes.
Zeman, executive director of the B.C. Wildlife Federation, published a commentary last month decrying what he calls chronic and prolonged underfunding for renewable resource management in the province.
"In 2003, British Columbia got a taste of catastrophic, uncontrollable wildfires and the pall of choking smoke lasting months," Zeman wrote. "We were rightly frightened at the prospect of this apocalyptic new reality."
Zeman said the provincial government has since failed to heed what should have been a wake-up call two decades ago, leading to "fish and wildlife decline, massive uncontrollable wildfires, and widespread drought as the norm."
Retired firefighter Glen Maddess and his wife live in Kelowna, and he remembers seeing the fire as it smouldered in the park that day in 2003.
He recalls going out for a run, struck by how the fire began gradually growing and moving, then later driving down a main street where residents were being evacuated.
"Just seeing the amount of people having to leave and take their belongings with them, the valuable belongings because they couldn't take everything, and it's sort of 'whoa, this is serious,' and I've been in the business for a long time," he said.
Even after decades in the firefighting business, Maddess said he was in awe of the "magnitude of the seriousness" of the fire.
"It's interesting 20 years later that we're facing basically the same problems as we did before," he said.
Maddess was later tapped to help prepare a report on the 2003 wildfire season for the provincial government entitled "Firestorm," authored by former Manitoba Premier Gary Filmon.
"We have learned some lessons," he said.
There's now a greater pool of firefighting expertise to draw from provincially, nationally, and internationally, he said.
Maddess said there's also a greater depth of knowledge about how to respond to interurban wildland fires, where residential development abuts natural landscapes chock full of fuels that feed the now yearly blazes.
The Filmon report said that the 2003 wildfire season scorched over 2,600 square kilometres across B.C., at the time a record amount. So far this season, more than 16,000 square kilometres have burned.
Former Kelowna fire chief Gerry Zimmermann has had a lot of time to reflect on the 2003 disaster, and he's now just thankful it wasn't worse as wildfire seasons have only grown in intensity since.
"When I look what's happening around the world right now like Hawaii and places like that, it makes ours look kind of small," he said.
Zimmermann, who's now retired from firefighting, said it's hard to assess whether the 2003 wildfires were a glimpse into a future with unheeded lessons dooming the province to repeat history.
But he said a few things have improved, especially communications with the public through the media, which at the time was "terrible" before they decided to change course.
"We were giving information out as soon as we had it," he said. "That was very, very successful. That's what got us through."
Zimmermann said "jurisdictional boundaries" were a hurdle back then, too. The fire in Okanagan Mountain Provincial Park was out of the Kelowna Fire Department's purview.
"What we had decided shortly after this fire, one of the main things was that if something came in, it didn't matter where it was, we were gonna go deal with it," he said. "I don't know whether they're still doing that or not, but the secret to these things is hitting it as hard and as fast with everything you can right off the bat and keep it small."
Zimmermann said firefighters were dealing with flames hundreds of feet high at some points, but a miraculous moment from one scary night sticks in his mind.
"We had guys trapped and we were having a heck of a time," he said. "When it was at its worst, the skies opened up and it started raining."
The rain that night, he said, gave firefighters a leg up "and after that, things got progressively better."
"We could have lost a good part of the city and a lot of good people and a little bit of help from upstairs," he said, "got us through this thing."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 16, 2023.
Darryl Greer, The Canadian Press
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