Forest Fire Update in Kelowna

This comes from Pastor Derrik Hamre, in Westbank and was emailed on Sunday morning.

We survived the night without evacuation, although we remain on evacuation alert. Our home on Doucette Drive is now in the middle of the two fires (one approaching from the west known as the Rosevalley fire and a second approaching from Glen Canyon in the south). We are housing a family of 5 who were evacuated yesterday from Glenrosa area. The fire watch is live on radio and Internet. Currently 6,500 residences or 17,500 people have been evacuated. Once again the church was central in coordination of emergency services and response. This was good until the fire jumped the highway, this followed with a major power outage and then evacuation of the church. We sent in volunteers to rescue computers and important documents. As the Holiday Inn next door was being evacuated, we were clearing out important documents from the church. I am happy to report that the church survived the night, although the fire is approaching the church from Glen Canyon. Currently we are watching water bombers and helicopters attacking the fires at both ends. Standing on our drive way we look left and see bombers attacking the growing Rosevalley fire. When we look right we see the lights of emergency vehicles as they man a new fire line they are building to protect the town of Westbank. The winds are light, the heat will be about 35, no rain. I was just on radio, interviewed about churches being closed in Westbank today. I told them that we are asking our families to gather together, to pray, to volunteer and to continue to help our community at this strategic time. The radio is now discussing water shortages, power outages, and new evacuation orders. I have to go, just wanted you to know that we are safe and currently still in our home. They just dropped fire retardant to the north, we have a lot of trees behind us. Got to go...