-Fire caused by 'intense lightning' still possible-
OSOYOOS TIMES-July 9, 2008-
By Chad Ingram and Paul EverestrnOsoyoos Times
High winds, large hail, severe lightning and heavy rains cut a swath of destruction through the Osoyoos area on the evening of July 3, leaving a teenaged boy injured and causing catastrophic damage to the local agriculture industry.
Blair Van Andel, a 13-year-old Edmonton boy, was seriously injured during the thunderstorm by a falling tree limb roughly 30 centimetres in diameter while camping at Haynes Point Provincial Park with his family.
He had been inside the family's tent at about 7:30 p.m. when the limb fell, crushing the lower portion of his right leg, said Blair's father, John.
He has multiple compound fractures and breaks starting at his knee and going down to his ankle, John said.
The rest of the Van Andel family had been taking shelter in the family's RV at the time.
John said campers at a neighbouring campsite immediately called 911 and Blair was taken to South Okanagan Regional Hospital, stabilized and transferred to Penticton Regional Hospital where he underwent surgery to install a plate in his lower leg on the morning of July 4.
Following the surgery, Blair was placed in intensive care, due to irregular breathing, John said.
The family often spends summers camping in Osoyoos and Summerland.
John said that, as of July 7, Blair was in stable condition and had been moved from the intensive care unit into pediatric care.
Ranbir Kambo, a board member with the B.C. Fruit Growers Association who owns orchards north of town, said the thunderstorm destroyed or damaged most of his crops.
He estimated that his apple and apricot crops were completely destroyed by triangular-shaped hail during the storm, while his plums suffered 80 per cent damage and cherries suffered 60 per cent damage.
My year is done, Kambo said, adding that he expects to lose $150,000 due to the damage. All it took was 15 minutes.rnAnd, he said, he was planning on harvesting the fruits on July 5.
Kambo said he has crop insurance, but it will only cover about 50 per cent of the damage.
We're going to have to take that loss.rnSince he has also committed to keeping his farm workers on until October, Kambo said he has to face the burden of extra costs associated with paying employees without harvest revenues.
Most other orchardists in an area extending from the U.S. border three kilometres north to the Sunfresh Cooperative Growers packing house on Hwy. 97 experienced similar damage, Kambo added.
Manfred Freese, president of the B.C. Grape Growers Association, said vineyard owners are looking at grape losses around the 20 per cent mark.
There's definitely some crop damage as far as the grape sector is concerned, he said.
Freese, who also owns a vineyard, said marble-sized hail was responsible for most of the damage to orchards and vineyards on both sides of the valley.
He said he had heard loss estimates from other local farmers that were similar to Kambo's.
What's left isn't worth harvesting, Freese said. Crop insurance is going to get a hefty bill.
It's the worst storm I've seen in the nine years I've been farming here.rnDoug Lundquist, a warning preparedness meteorologist with Environment Canada, said the storm, which crossed into the Osoyoos area from Washington state and moved in a north-by-northeast direction, had reached peak intensity just after 7 p.m.
On average, he said, winds were gusting between 39 and 57 km/h and could have possibly reached speeds of up to 90 km/h around the time the tree limb fell on Blair at Haynes Point.
It takes a fairly high wind to knock trees over, Lundquist said.
A monitoring station on Anarchist Mountain recorded 11.7 millimetres of rainfall during the storm, he added.
Lundquist also said it's not unusual for hail to take on non-spherical shapes as Kambo described once the stones reach a certain size.
Hail can take on odd shapes, he said.
When it gets large like that you can see the inconsistency in the shapes.rnOn top of the wind, rain and hail, Lundquist said intense lightning was also registered in the Osoyoos area during the storm.
Dale Bojahra, a fire information officer at the Kamloops Fire Centre, said it's likely that the heavy rains knocked down any fires that may have been sparked by the lightning around Osoyoos.
He added, however, that any lightning-caused fires would still be smouldering and storm-related blazes could pop up in the next little while as the area dries out and warms up.
I would expect to see something in the next couple of days, Bojahra said.
The centre has already had to deal with two small spot fires caused by lightning roughly 10 kilometres west of Osoyoos near Blue Lake this season.
The first started on the evening of June 30 and the centre deployed tanker planes to the area and the blaze was quickly extinguished.
The second broke out on July 5 and although that fire was extinguished, fire crews were still patrolling the area on July 7.
Cleanup from the storm was already underway early on the morning of July 4.
Town Operations Director Ron Doucette said Osoyoos's public works crews were out at 6 a.m. responding to flooding in low-lying areas around town and cleaning up a number of road washouts with sweepers and backhoes.
He said town storm drains and pumps couldn't keep up with the amount of rain that fell during the storm, especially as many drains became clogged with debris from the high winds.
Several roadways throughout downtown Osoyoos appeared more like small lakes rather than streets as the storm passed through.
Doucette also said the winds knocked over a tree in Cottonwood Park and an irrigation pump in north Osoyoos was offline for several hours due to a power outage stretching from the Shell gas station on Hwy. 97 to Willow Beach.
Osoyoos RCMP spokesman Cpl. Dan Moskaluk said emergency crews responded to a report of a windsurfer in distress on Osoyoos Lake around 7:40 p.m. but found that the person had made it ashore safely.
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