One year later, recovery in scorched path of McDougall Creek wildfire painfully slow

The McDougall Creek wildfire razed 191 homes in West Kelowna, Kelowna, Westbank First Nation. A year later, the devastation is still visible and rebuilding has barely begun.

Traders Cove and Wilsons Landing are a hive of activity these days.

Heavy equipment rumbling in and out of both neighbourhoods across the lake from Kelowna offers a distinct thrum while hammers continually clanging provide a backbeat to curbside conversations between neighbours.

On any given day that activity, cast against a backdrop of budding greenery and a gleaming lake, makes the community look vibrant and new, though that’s not quite the reality. There are deep scars beneath the shine that are far from healed.

Aug. 17 marks one year since the McDougall Creek wildfire whipped through the streets of Westside neighbourhoods, just two days after it started in the hills behind the city. The blaze eventually crossed to Kelowna, then Lake Country, and in its totality became the Grouse Complex.

While there were nearly 200 homes lost to the inferno that scarred 13,500 hectares in the Central Okanagan, the highest proportion of loss were more rural, lake-adjacent homes, with 90 destroyed.

Paul Zydowicz, fire chief of Wilson’s Landing, described the scene just days after the worst of the firefight was over.

“The fire was intense. It came very quickly. It came with violence. I can’t describe it any other way,” he said at the time. “The world shattered.”

Of the 24-member firefighting crew, 13 lost their homes that day. Zydowicz’s was among them.