08/22/2023
To everyone who has checked in and to those who might have texted or called in the first 48 hours of the wild fire and I haven’t responded… we are all okay. It was a difficult time for sure. We have been incredibly fortunate as our neighborhood is one of the few that remained untouched being on the south end of the fire. That being said our property still has been on evacuation alert since the first 24 hours as the fire did creep closer after thar first disastrous night. fortunately the southbound winds were never so strong.
By the end of Friday, mark and I decided it would be best if we got our daughter, cat and our important documents out just in case. This meant separating since Mark was needed to stay to support his home that was fractured to several sites across the okanagan and severely understaffed due to so many staff members having been evacuated from their homes.
Despite this, we both found we were better able to sleep and manage the stress this event was ultimately causing.
We were not unaware or naïve to the possibility of an evacuation, but we definitely never imagined one with such shear destruction and of course hoped our first year would not include this as an experience.
This whole experience was ultimately made more stressful initially because I had lost my phone thursday morning and had very limited ability to even keep in touch with mark let alone family. So if you did message me and I never replied, this is why. Know we are okay and I am so very sorry that you had to worry for so long.
Tomorrow (Wednesday) Evalyn and I will head home. We are hoping the rain and better handle on the fire will allow the smoke to start lifting but if it is still as oppressive as it sounds to be, we may be on the move again. But as before, we will take this one step at a time!
Thank you for the outpouring of support and concern. We have felt that net of caring ❤️