Joel Patan says his “life is ashes” now, as he sifts the ruins of his home that was incinerated last month, along with most structures in the small community of Faulder outside Summerland, B.C.
“It’s just gut-wrenching,” he said.
Patan, who runs an HVAC company, said his family moved onto their “dream property” in December 2024, buying it after flipping two other homes.
He said there were once more than 80 homes in Faulder but most were destroyed by the Bald Range wildfire that roared eastward on the evening of Aug. 7, setting off an evacuation of thousands from the Okanagan communities. An 80-year-old woman who lived in Meadow Valley nearby died suddenly during the evacuation, and Penticton RCMP said it was believed her death was “a result of the wildfire.”
“Running from a fire, grabbing everything you have, like I don’t think people understand. When we talk about ‘we ran from a fire,’ we ran,” Patan said.
“I had RCMP yelling at me, ‘get out of your house’ after I found the cat finally, (they were) basically saying, ‘the flames are right there.’”
The Bald Range fire is still burning but is listed as under control by the B.C. Wildfire Service. Wildfire activity is dying down as summer weather gives way to fall.
And families like Patan’s now face the prospect of rebuilding and recovering from the devastation of losing the roof over their heads.
The wildfire season in B.C. has burned far less area than usual, just 1,350 square kilometres, only about a quarter of the 20-year average.
But it has been one of the most devastating seasons on record for property destruction, with more than 500 homes or other structures destroyed or damaged.
About 150 of those were lost to the Bald Range fire, including 110 in Faulder and Meadow Valley, and 40 in the nearby Okanagan lakeside community of Summerland.
On the northern shores of Okanagan Lake, the Bradley Complex of fires near Vernon brought ruin right to the waterline, some residents watching from boats as their homes burned in early August. Some 230 homes on the lands of the Okanagan Indian Band were lost.
About 240 kilometres to the northwest, the Big Bar Complex of fires destroyed structures on around 120 properties outside Clinton, B.C., while the Brunswick Complex of fires outside Boston Bar in the Fraser Canyon, 200 kilometres northeast of Vancouver, damaged seven structures, four of them homes or cabins.
There is no singular path to recovery, either on an individual or community level.
The Ministry of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness said in a statement that “recovery looks different for each community and is led by local governments and First Nations with support from the province, federal partners, non-government organizations, businesses and community members.”
It said it has assigned “community recovery officers” to work with impacted areas and will “continue supporting local governments and First Nations as they lead recovery efforts in their communities, including through recovery planning, governance, co-ordination and available supports.”
Access to Faulder is still restricted, with a checkpoint allowing people in only if they have a permit. Private security guards roam the community to protect against looting.
Blackened trees line Princeton-Summerland Road to Faulder, where homes have been reduced to their foundations, with burnt shells of vehicles a common sight along the winding road into the hills above the valley.
Patan said he’s now dealing with his insurer, considering himself lucky since many Faulder residents were either uninsured or underinsured and are now focused on survival.
The cleanup of damaged properties, he said, also has to factor in other potential hazards, including silica dust, asbestos and other potential contaminants like lead and mercury.
“People are trying to bring their trailers in with no water and that’s another scary thing. They’re bringing in trailers. Some people don’t have electrical. We don’t an adequate source of water right now … but people need somewhere to live.”
The smell of the fire still hangs in the air around the charred foundation of Patan’s home. Broken glass and other debris crunches and cracks under his feet as he surveys the ruin.
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Patan descends the stairs into what used to be his basement, pointing out one of his daughter’s porcelain doll’s head in the rubble.
“You’re standing in what above me was my master bedroom,” he said, his arms outstretched to the sky.
Exactly how far his insurance will go is an open question, but he laments all that was lost in the evacuation, including one of his daughter’s first pair of shoes.
Soft-spoken Patan said even though there have been tears and grief, he’s optimistic, a childhood trait.
“My Mom and Dad would tell you, when I had a bad day, I would wake up the next day like it never happened,” he said.
“We’ll build a house that is good for wildfire interface, good for our family, still the same four bedrooms, three baths, things that we may have not liked about our house, we’ll repair, we may fix, but again, we have to see within the confines of our insurance, but whatever we can do to get back what we had, and then it’s just a new beginning, and we just move forward.”
“I will buy my daughters every toy they want,” he added.
TRYING TO EASE BURDEN OF RECOVERY
Erick Thompson, senior manager of communications and engagement with the Regional District of Okanagan Similkameen, said the focus is both on recovery and “providing support to those people who have lost property, lost a home, lost outbuildings.”
“Recovery is a long phase and there’s a lot that goes along with that,” he said. “Remediation of properties, removal of debris, so the RDOS is helping with other agencies to co-ordinate a lot of that.”
“But in the aftermath of this wildfire, recovery is always a challenge and when people have lost a home, especially if they’re not insured, the local government’s role is to advocate for them.”
He said the Union of British Columbia Municipalities convention in Vancouver last week saw regional district staff advocating for things like waiving provincial sales tax for people trying to rebuild and help with debris removal.
The regional district said in a statement on Monday that officials at the convention “emphasized the need for measures that help reduce the financial burden on residents rebuilding homes, properties, and livelihoods.”
Relief from provincial sales tax, it said, is “a critical area for provincial consideration.”
“Many residents are facing substantial rebuilding costs, including debris removal, site preparation, construction materials, utility reconnections, and code compliance requirements.”
Police, meanwhile, are still looking into the cause of the Bald Range wildfire.
Penticton RCMP said in a statement this week that its investigators are part of a multi-agency effort to find out the fire’s cause believed to have started in the afternoon hours of Friday, Aug. 7.
“The investigation remains ongoing,” the statement said. “Investigators are seeking to speak with anyone who may have witnessed suspicious activity or observed individuals, vehicles, or other actions in the vicinity of Princeton-Summerland Road and Bathville Road, including the Crump Recreation Site and Trout Creek Recreation Site.”
Brian Callow’s Summerland mushroom farm, What the Fungus, was also a casualty of the fire. The property that housed its operations is now strewn with twisted metal, burned vehicles and equipment and the skeletons of greenhouses.
The property, owned by his business partner whose tree-service business supplied the wood chips to grow the mushrooms, is still strewn with debris and they have yet to obtain a demolition permit, which requires a hazard assessment.
Callow said the District of Summerland has voted to reduce the cost of demolition permits, but the town’s dump remains closed and “getting rid of all the waste seems to be a big issue right now.”
He said the farm wasn’t insured, but they’ve raised money in an online fundraiser and had offers of help from people in the community to replace lost tools and for materials to rebuild.
“But replacing all the specialized mushroom equipment, especially with the tariff war that’s going on with the U.S. and Canada, all of our equipment comes from the U.S.,” he said. “So, I don’t even have a price of replacing that yet. It’ll be quite expensive.”
The fire’s behaviour, he said, was puzzling but it ended up on multiple sides of the property, burning up vehicles and buildings.
An orange Kubota tractor stands out among the rubble, looking like it had been mostly spared by the flames, and Callow said it had been started and moved by firefighters.
“But by the time he got there it had already been half-melted and believe it or not that’s about $20,000 worth of damage on it,” he said.
He said he’d been sent a video of the property engulfed in flames. He didn’t even recognize it as he watched it burn.
‘EVERYBODY’S FORGOTTEN US’
The destruction of Faulder and evacuation of thousands of people from Summerland were defining moments of B.C.’s wildfire season, playing out on videos and images that flooded social media and went around the world.
But earlier in the season, residents in and around Clinton in the Cariboo region also fled fires that merged into the Big Bar Complex of wildfires.
Steve and Kathy Naseth had lived in their modular home outside Clinton for 25 years, and after the evacuation order was lifted and Steve returned to begin the clean up, “it was devastation.”
“The problem I’m finding is I think everybody’s forgotten about us,” he said.
The couple has insurance, but they said they felt failed by the provincial and regional governments.
While the spotlight was on the evacuation of Summerland, they said those on the outskirts of Clinton haven’t received attention despite being displaced after their homes were destroyed.
The couple, both in their early 60s, is staying in a trailer on their property, but they’ll be staying in Cache Creek during the winter, and face years of rebuilding that has delayed their retirement plans.
Their son-in-law has been helping with cleanup, but they also have hectares of range lands that need to be refenced.
“We don’t have the mobility or the machinery to do that and that’s going to come out of our insurance, which is costly. It takes away from what we can put back into our home,” Kathy said. “We had a four-bedroom modular home. It was beautiful. Now we have to shrink it down to three, possibly even two, just to make sure we’ve got a roof over our head because we don’t know where else to go.”
“This was our retirement home and we were going to sell it and of course then go travelling.”
She said they’ll likely have to work for a few more years because of the loss, even with their insurance because it’s not “going to be enough.”
“We were here for 25 years,” she said. “We don’t have 25 years again to build that all up again, and we’ve lost photos, we’ve lost heirlooms, we’ve lost everything. And we’re not the only ones, like the rest of this valley, they lost everything. Most of them don’t have insurance. ”
Louis and Shorty Fred’s home on the Okanagan Indian Band reserve near Vernon, B.C., was destroyed in the Bradley Creek blaze in early August, and they’re expecting a “long haul” as a phased recovery gets underway.
They said they got a chance to attend their property soon after the fire.
“There’s not much to go through, it’s just all ash and rubble right now,” Shorty Fred said.
Louis Fred said there’s still dangerous trees to be dealt with, and while the road is open and power lines are back up, the cleanup and environmental assessment will be “quite the process.”
They said they don’t plan to rebuild on the same part of their property, moving to a part that wasn’t hit by the fire.
“It’s going to be a while, but we’re really fortunate,” he said.
Louis Fred said he was diagnosed with cancer a few years ago, and a tumour the size a golf ball was found on his spine. He was on crutches for a while.
“I went through one heck of a time,” he said.
They said their Christian faith helped them through the health scare, and they’re relying on it to get them through the aftermath of the fire.
“You don’t realize these things. It’s the little things that we all take for granted nowadays. Until you lose it, then you realize like, hey, you’ve got to take a better look at your life and thank God,” Shorty Fred said.
Louis Fred recalled not being able to eat during his cancer treatment and being grateful after a trip to A&W where he had “the best doggone Mama Burger I ever ate in my life. It tasted so good I was laughing and crying at the same time.”
He said he turned 78 a week after the fire and believes “God cleaned the slate.”
“We have a new opportunity to start over again and do it right this time. Do everything right,” he said. “We feel bad about the things that we did lose that you can’t replace, like all our pictures and stuff back from my grandma. But life goes on.”
