The Summerland Gazette needs a photograph that truly represents our community.
Our current header uses a generic image of a lakeside town, but readers have told us they would rather see Summerland itself—and we agree.
We’re inviting local photographers to submit their best wide-format photographs of Summerland. The selected photographer will receive full credit and complimentary advertising space on the Summerland Gazette website.
Interested? Please contact us through our Contact page and tell us a little about your photograph. Photographers must own the image and authorize the Summerland Gazette to display and crop it for use on the website.
We look forward to seeing Summerland through your lens.
I was one of many that was evacuated when the Bald Range was a blaze. 8 days I was out of my home, it seemed like a Hundred.
There were daily briefings with first responders and volunteer firefighters. I wanted to know what they were talking about but wasn’t allowed to know.
With all that went on over the last 6 years the level of trust is at an all time low. I would like to know. Maybe Foia would get this information?
How you feel about this is very typical of what happens across many municipalities. It’s always the same. I don’t think it comes down to intent to hold people back or to misinform or to keep them in the dark. I think it’s a matter of competency and communication. It could be that staff are not adequately trained in communication during such a crisis because they only come up once a year, but we need to establish a protocol moving forward so that in future years, when something like this happens, there is a protocol for communicating. The district staff, of course, are always worried about liability, and so they often opt to say nothing because they’re afraid of what they might say could incur liability. So that’s the dampening effect of this situation, that’s the wet cloth over keeping it all coherent and open. And we need to find a way around that.
We certainly don’t profess to know all the answers, but what I do know is we should take the time we’ve got now in the off-season and devise a system of communication so that people are not left out in the dark. In my own case in Peachland, when we got the evacuation notice at 2:30 in the morning, I told the RCMP I’m not leaving. There’s no kids in our house, so they couldn’t force us out. There was just the two of us, and I chose to stay. And they weren’t happy with that, but they accepted it and left. There were probably 15 other families in my immediate neighborhood that also stayed, and we met in the park, partied, talked, and had a good time. We had a good communication going on. The RCMP were actually quite helpful. I gave them access to my water pipes at my house because they were, ironically, eating lots of peaches at the time, and so they’d get their hands all sloppy and messy. I just put the hose out there for them to pull in and get washed up, and offered them washroom facilities if they wanted. But they were happy.
Also, a side note: for the first time all year, the speed limit on my street fell from 110 kilometers an hour down to 30 kilometers an hour while the RCMP were on it and monitoring. So that was a benefit.
I think if we want to set it up for next year, we need to start talking about solutions and get the opinions of enough people from Summerland as to what they’d like to see for next time. Then let’s push forward with it and put some pressure on the district to make it happen.