Kitchener woman recounts harrowing experience in Kelowna amid devastating wildfires

Click to Expand

A Kitchener woman who went to Kelowna for her bachelorette returned this weekend after her trip was cut short due to the rampant wildfires in the Okanagan Valley.

She is now speaking out about her experience and recounting some of the terrifying moments during her time in Kelowna.

“We looked out the window, and we were shocked,” Amanda Voisin told CTV News Monday.

Thick, black smoke made it almost impossible to see.

“We could see it was getting worse quite quickly, I mean, we are from here [Waterloo Region], so I’ve never experienced anything like that in my life.”

Voisin traveled to Kelowna for her trip with her friends last week, not expecting their time to be cut short.

“Like you could see flames all along the top of the horizon [and] the whole mountain range in front of us, and it was just such a stark difference from just an hour or two earlier.”

Voisin recently arrived back home after traveling from Kelowna to Vancouver airport, where she luckily secured a flight. But she says at one point, time was ticking.

“It was just us trying to figure out how to get out honestly, and that became more and more apparent as you know the airport shut down the bridge closed,” she explained. “Thank god we made it passed before that, but I know now there’s even non essential travel which isn’t allowed in or out, so we would have been stuck there.”

“Everyone was just trying to get out,” she added. “We here don’t really honestly have a concept of how bad it actually is, how scary it actually is for those people,” she added.

This comes as the B.C. government recently implemented a restriction on tourism related travel to areas affected by wildfires under its state of emergency.

Premier David Eby adding that there are about 35,000 people on evacuation order across the province and another 30,000 on evacuation alert that may need to leave at a moments notice.

While Voisin is relieved to be home, she says she worries for those in Kelowna and is looking to offer help any way she can.

“Anything you can do to help give resources to fight these fires would be fantastic…the more support we can provide [like] emergency services and firefighting services for those situations, the better.”