As night fell over his Kelowna, B.C., home last week, Scott Sieben looked to the far side of Okanagan Lake and studied the menacing, orange glow he’d come to recognize all too well. Nearly 20 years to the day after he’d lost his own home to wildfire, another one was racing down the opposing hillside and reducing dozens of homes to ruins.
Then his son james called.
The McDougall Creek wildfire had jumped from the western edge of the lake toward james’s home in Lake Country, about 45 kilometres north of Scott’s. james and his partner were packing up and leaving, just as his parents had