Batchelor resident thankful for firefighters after Thursday’s close call

Jun 22, 2018 | 3:52 PM

KAMLOOPS — A pillar of smoke marked the first day of summer in Kamloops. 

For those living near the site of Thursday’s fire above Batchelor Heights, it was an evening they won’t soon forget. 

“I was afraid to lose everything, and then you sit back and say, ‘I’m 70 years old, where do you start?’ It was emotional,” said Brian Purfield. 

Purfield is the president of the Ridge View Heights Condo Association. The complex is located along the edge of the grassland that was scorched by fire. 

He wasted no time in evacuating his residence. 

“With the wind blowing the way that it was, it was extremely fast,” Purfield said. “There was no time to make decisions, to sit back and say, ‘I want to go in the house and gather up whatever.’ It’s go. Because it’s just stuff, and it can all be replaced.”

As residents left their homes behind, firefighters from Kamloops Fire Rescue and the BC Wildfire Service worked to contain the blaze. 

“Thankfully a quick response on both agencies part,” said the BC Wildfire Service’s Chief Fire Information Officer Kevin Skrepnek. “We were able to stop the fire before it posed any immediate threat to any structures up there. But certainly a large fire, a 60 hectare grass fire, very quick moving, and obviously it was quite visible from within the city.”

Charolette Hein was returning to her home on Stagecoach Drive when news first broke of the fire above Batchelor Heights. 

“Of course the closer and closer we got there was more and more smoke,” she said. “As we were approaching the intersection to Batchelor and Grasslands we’ve got fire on our right hand side on the hill, we can see it’s 20, 30 feet. We’ve got a fire truck down at the bottom. We can see the fire men running up the hill with their hoses and we’re going are they running to warn us? We can’t go anywhere, I mean where do we go?”

The fire came about 55 feet from the Ridge View Heights complex, according to Purfield. He says he’s extremely grateful for the hard work firefighters put in to save those homes. 

 “Outstanding, the people who did all of this yesterday, especially in the wind conditions to fly and do what they did for us, we’re very fortunate to be surrounded by the people we have around us. Very fortunate.”