Wildfires ripping through British Columbia’s wine country have ruined grapes, spoiled fruit on trees and caught cattle in dangerous areas as farmers and workers evacuate to church basements and friends’ homes.
The impact on the wine industry will last years, said Ron Kubek, owner of Lightning Rock Winery, who had fled to a safe area and was keeping tabs on his staff, friends and business associates who were scattered after flames burned their homes.
The Bald Range wildfire over the weekend triggered the largest evacuation in B.C. this summer, and killed at least one person. Fire has forced more than 20,000 people to leave their homes in the Okanagan Valley, one of Canada’s premier wine regions and a tourist destination known for orchards and sparkling lakes.
Already, Kubek knows this year’s crop of Pinot Noir and other grapes is worthless, since the smoke from weeks of wildfires gives it “smoke taint,” a term for the smoky stench that gets into the grapes and makes them unusable for wine production.
“Nobody wants smoke-tainted wine,” he said.
Not only are Kubek’s grapes unusable, but they will still need to be harvested and disposed of so the vines can produce a crop next year. He will pay for harvesting a crop he cannot use, as well as have more than 5,000 fewer cases of wine to sell in coming years. He has also had to shut his tasting room.
Vintners are facing such situations up and down the valley in peak summer tourist season.
Asked how to help, Kubek said, “Tonight, when you’re looking at a bottle of foreign wine on the shelf, buy a bottle of Okanagan wine instead. That’s what we need.”
Evacuating cattle
Local fruit growers have a more immediate crisis: their harvest is hanging in trees, unable to be picked. Kubek said his neighbor’s peach orchards were only 20 per cent picked when the area was evacuated, leaving more than C$300,000 of fruit spoiling.
Canada, like parts of the U.S. and Europe, has endured a summer of widespread and devastating fires, produced by drought and the higher temperatures caused by climate change. In British Columbia alone, 101 fires burned on Tuesday morning. There have been 904 this year.
The lush Okanagan Valley is also a summer grazing destination for cattle. B.C. Agriculture and Food Minister Lana Popham told reporters on Tuesday 50,000 animals are in areas under evacuation orders.
John Parkes drove a scattered herd of cows and calves to safety from the raging fires near Summerland on Monday, with two other cowboys.
“Your exit strategy is blocked by a wall of fire, so you have to turn around,” he said. “It’s tricky, for sure.”
Parkes and his fellow cowboys came from another ranch to help a rancher.
“There are ranchers all across British Columbia that are helping each other out, helping evacuate and preserve the cattle,” said Parkes, whose lungs had to cope with some of the worst air pollution on Earth on Monday. “I can’t imagine how my horse feels,” he said.
(Reporting by Ed White; Editing by Caroline Stauffer and Rod Nickel)
