As the Bradley Creek wildfire exploded in size Saturday in B.C.’s Okanagan, Avery Brownell and her boyfriend were at her family’s cabin.
“The fire started to come down the hill,” said Brownell. “So we were like, OK, we should probably head back to town pretty quick here.”
They began driving home to Vernon, as the flames drew closer.
“Nobody stopped us, so we just continued to go because we were like, OK, it can’t be that bad,” said Brownell. “As we were driving for a couple minutes, we noticed that the fire had already jumped the road.”
As flames surrounded them on both sides of Westside Road, Brownell started recording on her cellphone.
“We realized there was no turning around, so we just went through it,” she said. “(It was) probably the most terrifying thing that I’ve ever experienced in my life… it was like driving through an apocalypse.”
She credits her boyfriend Tanner with staying calm and driving them through the fire.
“He kept his eye on that line in the middle of the road, and he got us out of there safely,” Brownell said. “You can hear me in the video being like, ‘Oh my God Tanner, I’m scared.’ That was when we were going through the flames. You could definitely feel the heat. At one point, I think I said, ‘Oh my God, it’s so hot in here.’ It was insane.”
Not only did Brownell and her boyfriend get through the wall of flame unscathed, their old pickup truck did, too.
“At one point, I thought that the windows were going to explode because I was like, there’s no way that they can handle this heat,” she said.
More than 200 structures, mostly homes and cabins, were destroyed by the Bradley Creek wildfire on Saturday. Brownell is relieved her family’s cabin was spared, but she knows others who weren’t so lucky.
“My sister’s boyfriend’s family cabin, as well as a lot of friends’ and family cabins, are unfortunately gone,” she said. “It’s going to be a lot to rebuilt as well as clean up.”
