Don Urquhart, Times-Chronicle
Flames lit up the sky on the Osoyoos east bench during the early evening of Saturday, March 11 with Ryan McCaskill, deputy fire chief of Osoyoos Fire Rescue saying the fire was the result of a burn pile that got away from the resident.
“The call came in at 18:48 as a grass fire, we rolled two engines, one tender and a command vehicle, so four vehicles and 13 firefighters were on the scene. We arrived within 15 minutes and had the fire under control two minutes later.”
When the firefighters arrived on scene – located on 44th Avenue behind the former Island View RV Resort – the fire was about six metres by six metres with flames about four metres high. McCaskill says the dramatic images seen circulating on social media were a result of the fire making its way from the burn pile to the tree line which then caused some of the trees to flare up.
“Crews pulled a couple of hand lines and were able to knock it down quite quickly,” he said, adding they remained on scene for another hour to cool it. The homeowner subsequently put a sprinkler line on it for the night to ensure there were no hot spots.
With spring just around the corner, the incident has the fire department reminding residents to be properly prepared when burning.
“You’ve got to keep an eye on it, make sure you’ve got a water source around, make sure there’s nothing around your burn piles that can catch – you don’t want to do it in a grassy field or anything like that – you want to make sure there is some kind of barrier from anything else that can ignite.”
And definitely keep it away from structures, trees, power lines – anything that could be a hazard, McCaskill says. He also advises that burning through the day is always better. “There shouldn’t be any burning going on in the evening. We want all fires out through the night,” he adds.
