Author: 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.

It was about 3:45 p.m. on Aug. 3 when Joyce Harvey was sitting on the sofa in the living room of her Spartan Drive home when she looked out the window and saw a storm approaching over Osoyoos Lake.
Strong winds and hail began to hit the windows at the back of her home, which stands on the lakeshore at Lacey Point, and when a loud bang rang out, Harvey thought her roof was about to cave in.

As flames devoured sagebrush dangerously close to her property, Mahin Chekarnia’s husband worked with his backhoe to create a ditch and fire barrier around the couple’s home which overlooks Spotted Lake, west of Osoyoos.
A wildfire that broke out in the Spotted Lake area at about 3:30 p.m. on Aug. 2 burned 40.2 hectares and required the B.C. Forest Service to deploy three air tankers, four helicopters, two spotter planes and 40 firefighters to combat the blaze.

“Unexpected shift vacancies” were behind the eight-hour closure of the emergency department at Oliver’s South Okanagan General Hospital on July 17 and 18.
Mark Watt, Interior Health’s acute health services administrator for Osoyoos and Oliver, said the department was closed from 11 p.m. on July 17 to 7 a.m. on July 18.