Dear Editor:
Kudos, many thanks and endless heartfelt gratitude are in order to the RCMP officers, emergency workers and especially the firefighters who worked together to save my home and those homes of my neighbours in Kilpoola this past Friday evening,
I can’t thank enough the trio of police officers who knocked loudly on my door at 10:30 p.m. to order me out of my home and sent me to the Sonora Community Centre, the magnificent volunteer ladies who took me in and gave me a sleeping pad on the floor of the gymnasium and the the soot-covered firefighters who staggered into the gym at 4 a.m.
I will never forget the male and female RCMP officers who secured Kilpoola during the evacuation. These are the same officers who, in fact, woke me up at 10:30 p.m. Saturday night to make sure it wasn’t an unwelcome stranger watching my television.
All of these officers were efficient, empathetic and professional in performing their jobs that urgently needed doing.
What more can one ask?
I would also like to mention a lady named Jennifer, unknown to me, who went out of her way to take my two horses up to safety to her property up on Anarchist Mountin.
To all of these good people, I want to say thank you, thank you and thank you again.
The most memorable moment of my evacuation is too good not to share.
When 30 or so dirty, weary, but very buff and fit young firefighters came into the dim light of the gymnasium at the Sonora Centre in the early morning hours Saturday and began to strip down before falling asleep, I gave up my sleeping pad and went out to the foyer where I joined several neighbours at a table.
Two or three minutes later, one neighbours’ wife sleepily emerged from the gym as well and said while smiling, “I thought I had died and gone to heaven.”
Thanks once again.
Lee Whitehead
Osoyoos, B.C.
