Westside Road closed near West Kelowna due to wildfire

The Bald Range Creek Wildfire has triggered the closing of Westside Road until further notice and 18 properties are on evacuation alert.

The fire was discovered at 6:11 p.m. yesterday, July 17, and had grown to 4.08 ha by 10:50 p.m., according to BC Wildfire Service.

It is burning out of control and the cause is under investigation.

It is visible from Kelowna and Lake Country.

Drive BC says the road is closed for 6 km, from north of Lake Okanagan Resort to north of Caesar’s Landing and there are no detours.

The 18 properties on evacuation alert are from 3985 to 4069 Westside Road.

“Residents in the area are advised to be ready to leave their home at a moment’s notice,” says a posting on the Central Okanagan Emergency Operations Centre website. “They should be prepared to be away from their home for an extended period of time, make arrangements for pets and pack essential items such as medicines and important documents.”

The site also says BC Hydro assigned a crew to an outage affecting 1,377 customers in Fintry and Killiney Beach but a BC Hydro update at 2:10 a.m. said only 69 properties were affected by then.

Go here for more updates from the Central Okanagan Emergency Operations Centre site.


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Rob Munro

Rob Munro has a long history in journalism after starting an underground newspaper in Whitehorse called the Yukon Howl in 1980. He spent five years at the 100 Mile Free Press, starting in the darkroom, moving on to sports and news reporting before becoming the advertising manager. He came to Kelowna in 1989 as a reporter for the Kelowna Daily Courier, and spent the 1990s mostly covering city hall. For most of the past 20 years he worked full time for the union representing newspaper workers throughout B.C. He’s returned to his true love of being a reporter with a special focus on civic politics

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