Lynn and Alex Sutton were able to move their three horses off their property when the fire threatened to move in their direction. Photo by Paul Everest - Click on picture for larger image

OSOYOOS TIMES-August 11, 2010

By Paul Everest - Osoyoos Times

It was the glare off a helicopter blade outside his home that alerted 82-year-old Glenn McAndrew that something was wrong on the afternoon of Aug. 2.
McAndrew, who lives atop a hill overlooking Spotted Lake at the western end of Kruger Mountain Road, was in his home reading when a wildfire broke out in the brush around the lake at about 3:30 p.m. that afternoon.
He was oblivious to the blaze until he saw the helicopter in his front yard.
“I said, ‘What the hell is he doing here?’” McAndrew said.
When he went outside the helicopter’s pilot told him that the fire was approaching his 31.5-hectare property and had jumped the long driveway leading up to McAndrew’s home, effectively cutting him off from escape on the ground.
The pilot asked McAndrew if he felt the heat, to which McAndrew replied yes, and the pilot said “That means we gotta get out of here now.”
“I didn’t even have time to take my glasses with me,” McAndrew said.
He was taken by helicopter to safety at the intersection of Old Richter Pass Road and Kruger Mountain Road and then a neighbour took him in.
Having to leave behind his possessions wasn’t the only thing that distressed McAndrew when he was evacuated in such a swift manner from the home he has lived in for five years.
He had to leave a pair of Louisiana Catahoula leopard dogs named Brewster and Cuddles and two cats in his home when the helicopter came for him.
“I felt really sick,” McAndrew said. “I’ve had Brewster all of this century and a month of the last one. He’s been a good friend.”
The provincial response to the blaze, including the deployment of three air tankers, four helicopters, two spotter planes and 40 firefighters, was rapid however, and McAndrew’s home was not damaged.
He was allowed to return to his house at 8 p.m. and found all of his pets to be fine, aside from giving him some grief for leaving without them.
“The dogs had a lot to say,” he said.
Just down the hill from McAndrew’s home, Alex and Lynn Sutton, with the help of a neighbour, had to grab their three horses and walk them off the couple’s four-hectare property to a neighbour’s home when the fire threatened to turn in their direction.
Lynn said the fire was moving so fast that there was no time to grab anything else from their home when the RCMP drove up and said it was time to leave.
The blaze burned roughly three hectares of the Sutton’s property and damaged 70 per cent of the fences bounding their land.
The heat seared the family’s home and Lynn said the roof will have to be replaced.
There is also fire retardant, dropped from the air tankers that fought the blaze, over much of the family’s property.
Lynn said her family faces a serious challenge now when it comes to her horses, because the fire burned up most of their pasture land and they now have to be confined in a 0.2-hectare paddock.
She said she will now lose roughly $400 a month now because she won’t be able to board other horses.
And since her own trio of horses can’t graze on the property any more, she’ll have to spend $200 month buying feed.
While Lynn watched restoration crews clean up her property on Aug. 6, her neighbours, Myrna and Andy Anderson, dropped by to check on the Sutton’s horses.
They told the Osoyoos Times that they weren’t at home when the fire broke out, but a neighbour, 86-year-old John Wilkinson, saw the blaze and brought up some trailers to rescue the Anderson’s horses.
Andy said Wilkinson’s actions, and the actions of other community members who brought up trailers and moved 14 horses from the Kilpoola area while the fire raged nearby, fit with the “old definition of neighbour” where people help each other out.
“I have to give a really huge thank you to our community,” he said.
In the end, the fire burned more than 40 hectares of land around Spotted Lake but did not destroy any homes in the area.
The fire was declared 100 per cent contained on Aug. 3.
Elise Riedlinger, a fire information officer with the Kamloops Fire Centre, said the site of the blaze was “still under patrol” at the end of last week with a handful of firefighters still mopping up and scanning the ground for hotspots.
No one was injured from the fire, she added, but four homes were involved in an evacuation and families in three more residences were advised to leave.
The cause of the fire is still under investigation, Riedlinger said, but some local residents said they had heard that a truck driver was seen tossing a lit cigarette out of his truck near the spot where the fire started off of Hwy. 3.
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