Photos show Bradley Creek wildfire destruction as resident describes losing everything

Amber Cardenas can’t believe she has lost her home, her livelihood and precious family heirlooms, seemingly in the blink of an eye.

She has lived on the Okanagan Indian Band reserve for about 12 years and she and her family were forced to flee the fast-moving Bradley Creek wildfire on Saturday.

“There was no evacuation alert put out,” she said.

“The fire was about, I’d say about 15 km south of our home, and all the information that we were getting (from) friends and family who were on the volunteer department. B.C. Wildfire was kind of on site.”

Cardenas said all of the indications pointed to the fire burning southeast and away from her home.

“Clearly the wind shifted and it changed pretty fast,” she said.

“And once that wind kind of took it, that fire just like took off, and in a matter of from 9:00 to 10:00, even around 12, it was still like nowhere near our house, but with that wind shift, it was probably within an hour that we found out, and volunteer firefighters were going door to door telling people to leave.”

Cardenas said she is sad and frustrated about how much their lives have changed in such a short amount of time.

“I’ve been grateful for that all of my family is safe, and it’s not just our house,” she said.

“Like, so many structures were lost. So many friends and family, their houses are gone. But it’s a pretty hard reality to accept and live in right now.”

Okanagan Indian Band Chief Dan Wilson said on Tuesday morning that up to 230 homes may have been lost in the Bradley Creek wildfire.

It is now mapped at more than 2,800 hectares and remains out of control.

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Cardenas’ home was one that burned to the ground.

“We’ve had the fire come down to our house before, and we do control burning every spring,” she said.

“Our family and we were pretty optimistic that our house was going to make it through this fire again, through this wildfire, and it just happened to not be the case. So, I think, you know, you can only do so much to prepare, and when it’s last minute like that, we grab what we could. But like we were saying, we didn’t think with all the information that we were getting, it didn’t indicate once that it was coming for our direction until it was.”

A GoFundMe has now been set up to help the family get back on their feet.

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Destruction from the Bradley Creek wildfire

Cardenas said B.C. Wildfire crews did an amazing job of tackling the fire from the air, but she said it was frustrating that there wasn’t an evacuation alert issued.

“My partner was able to grab some very valuable, irreplaceable things,” she said.

“Some of her grandmother’s baskets, her mom’s baskets, some clothes, not very many… My partner, she’s a jeweler, and you know we invested a lot of money into her equipment and her supplies, and all of that’s gone. And any gifts, everything from our life, it’s gone.”

Cardenas said when the winds shifted and changed direction, there was little they could do to stop it.

“It was just like the dark, like that darkness of that smoke was just coming over the house, and in the distance you could just hear the rumbling and the popping of the trees, and a big like of it just bellowing, and that it was coming this way,” she said.

“I’m grateful to the volunteer firefighter who’s like, you know, ‘You gotta get out, you gotta get out!’.”

She said so many lives are forever changed from the Bradley Creek fire.

“The start of it is, like we went and watched that fire on Friday night, and I got pictures of that too when we went and looked, and you could see it. And at the time, it was just a grass fire, and it just got away and wouldn’t stop.”

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Man escapes Bradley Creek Wildfire by boat and watches cabin go up in flames

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