Kelowna to Edmonton - 09/02/09

Woke up to clear blue sky in Kelowna.  I headed down to Westbank to get off my last delivery then straight back up through Kelowna to Winfield where I picked up my load for Edmonton.  By the time I was halfway to Kamloops I was into the smoke from the fires burning in the Kamloops area.

It has been a bad year in British Columbia for forest fires.  Very little rain combined with the heat and add to that all of the standing dead wood resulting from the pine beetle infestation, the result is a deadly combination.  Yesterday I was talking with Jack, a receiver at one of our regular deliveries in Salmon Arm.  He lives in the Sorrento area, another area hit hard with fires.  He told me he, like his neighbours has a little bit of acreage to his property.  The authorities have put 2500 gallon inflatable pools (as he described it) in their front yards.  Every day they come around and soak down the area all around the homes.  They have hoses running off the pools around the houses.  They then pump the pools back up to capacity with water tankers.  He doesn't see any end in sight to this until the first snow flies.

The smoke was quite heavy around Kamloops and was in the air all the way up to Clearwater.  That's 125 kilometers.  The picture I have taken is looking south from a rest area on the bank of the North Thompson river, just south of the town of Avola.  This is about 180 kilometers north of Kamloops.  It gives you an idea of just how smokey the province of BC is right now.

Here is a link to CBC news and dozens of pictures of the fires if your interested.

I managed to make it into Edmonton by 02:00 my time at any rate.  A long day.....a long 5 days since I left.