Fires and earthquakes and such, oh my!

Hey, Kelowna. You're on fire.

Literally.

If you haven't been following the news this week, forest fires have been creeping a little too close for comfort to the town of Kelowna, in BC's interior near the Albertan border. If this all sounds a little familiar, it's because the exact same thing happened six years ago (in fact, that picture is from 2003).

And in 2003, I was there.

(It's actually kind of ironic. When people from this area think of 'summer 2003' and 'natural disaster', their minds go straight to the major blackout. I was in Vancouver during that event, but made it to Kelowna for the fires.)

So I've been following this with a little more interest than the average Ontarian. When I see the pictures taken of downtown Kelowna, near the lake, where you can see the fire burning in the skies unsettlingly close - that's exactly how I remember it.

Background: my family went out west for two weeks. Vancouver to Calgary is an awfully long drive to make in one day, so the city of Kelowna was settled as a sort of mid-point. (Kamloops serves a similar function a little further north, for those wanting to get to Edmonton.) We planned on a one-night layover in Kelowna.

On our way through the interior, signs alerted us that the fire had caused a section of the highway to be closed. The detour was quite out of our way (I want to say it added another two hours to our drive), and we contemplated driving to Kamloops instead, but ultimately we ended up in Kelowna. As I mentioned above, the ash from the fires could be seen from downtown, and the air did have a bit of a smoky quality to it. With absolutely nothing else to do, we spent a bit of time in a Chapters, went for dinner, and then went to our hotel.

Then we listened to the radio (in retrospect, the music station was doing an excellent job of rising to the occasion and acting as the local live news service). Streets near the edge of the city were being evacuated, and there was a chance that the entire city could be under an evacuation order before the night was up.

Instead, the winds changed direction, the danger (to Kelowna) passed, and we went to bed.

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In other geographical/meteorological news, New Zealand is a foot closer to Australia than it was a month ago.

An earthquake under New Zealand last week has pushed the island about 30cm closer to Australia - a process that normally takes hundreds of years.

Continental drift fascinates me - on the rare occasions I remember it - and this is probably one of the best examples we'll have in my lifetime. Over time (an estimated 250 million years), California will break off from North America and become an island unto itself, while North America also heads westward and crashes into Asia.

But for the time being, it's just a little bit easier to swim from the kiwis to the koalas.

--Ryan