I received a call from Don Plant at the Kelowna Courier just after 12:15 on the afternoon of the fire...and headed over to the West Side to arrive just before the road was blocked by RCMP. It was decided that the closest place to park was a small driveway near the staging area, then engaged the other media and fire fighters to find out about the water bomber and when it would be arriving to make a few passes to drop the red fire retardant. I stayed put in that area until the bomber had dropped juice from its 6 tanks, and watched ground crews who climbed up the rocky hill to work the edges of the fire. Things calmed down a bit by early afternoon: people who lived in the area hovered near home just in case they had to be evacuated. I'm not surprised that emergency crews contained the fire so quickly, since the 2003 fire storms, fire fighters treat every threat seriously.

The two-hectare bush fire was mostly contained by about 2PM by ground crews hosing the fire with water and white fire retarding foam, two helicopters dropping water, and of course, the Lockheed L-188A Electra Airspray bomber unit. The smoke plume could be seen clearly from downtown Kelowna and into the Mission along Lakeshore Road.

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