Smoke clears, but air-quality concerns linger for young Kamloops families

A yellow air quality warning is in place for the Kamloops, Shuswap and Merritt areas heading into the weekend. Much of southern B.C. is under the same warning, the result of smoke from wildfires burning across the province.

Nicole Coulter, a mother of three, was enjoying ice cream with her kids and friends on Friday morning in Riverside Park.

“They love summer,” Coulter said of her kids. “They love being outside. They love the water. So, it’s always hard when I’m like, ‘Well, we can’t go outside today. It’s not safe.’ Unfortunately, that’s our new reality. Morale gets pretty low.”

Scoopz Ice Cream owner Adrianne Erlandson said poor air quality over the past month hampered business at the downtown location.

“We have such a short window to make our income for the year,” she said. “We are completely weather dependent. If the weather is not perfect, sales do decline. Having that smoke over the Ribfest weekend was pretty stressful.”

Erlandson said she is becoming increasingly adept at handling the unpredictably of wildfire season, including with scheduling for 35 staff.

“It’s fairly easy to navigate the staffing challenges of cutting shifts or adding shifts,” she said. “It’s hard, though. Lots of staff want the hours and, unfortunately, sometimes they’re just not there. We do our best.”

Erlandson said a second Scoopz location in the Chief Louis Crossing Commercial Complex helps to mitigate lost business at the downtown store during wildfire season.

“I feel like we have such a great, supportive community in Kamloops and our regular customers are always around to support us,” she said, noting ice-cream lovers have come in droves since the smoke dissipated earlier this week.

Parents are pivoting and finding indoor activities to keep their kids busy when smoke rolls into town.

Woodward suggested the City of Kamloops should consider pushing back the scheduled closure (Aug. 21 to Sept. 7) of the Canada Games Aquatic Centre.

“When you’ve got the fire season, that’s kind of like our go-to,” he said.

Coulter said the city is in a no-win situation, noting there is no ideal time for the maintenance closure to take place.

“From September to June, they have so many programs running that it would be really hard to close,” she said. “When winter time comes, we go to the pool a lot.”

Smoke-related malaise is shrouding the adults, too.

“In terms of outdoors, it’s been pretty muggy and terrible for the parents,” Woodward said. “I’ve noticed a lot of people are not going outside as much. Last week, I was thinking about it, like ‘Why do I not want to do anything?’ You can’t see the mountains, you can’t see more than a kilometre ahead of you. That’s a little draining. It makes you feel like you’re in a box.”

Coulter said making summer plans is more difficult.

“Do we go camping? Do we not?” she said. “Do we have visitors come? Do we not have visitors come? What does our summer really look like from now on? How long can we stay on the Island? Is the Island smoky at all? All of the above.”

Wildfire-season fallout is enough to force some to discuss moving away from the city.

“We talk about that almost every time the smoke comes in,” she said. “It’s hard because we love Kamloops. We’ve set up a great foundation here with our family. It would be really hard to leave. Yet every summer it comes around, worrying if our house, our lives are in jeopardy and what does the future look like?”

Woodward has no plans to leave Kamloops, noting the wildfire problem is nationwide, international and worsening.

“It’s more how do we combat it versus run away from it,” he said.

by Marty Hastings

Smoke clears, but air-quality concerns linger for young Kamloops families

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