Two years after a wildfire swept through Westside Road, the charred landscape has given way to a new disaster.
A landslide struck Tuesday night, in the same area affected by the McDougall Creek wildfire in 2023.
Engineering geologist Timothy Smith explains when a wildfire burns through a slope, it can create water-repellent soils, making it difficult for the ground to absorb rainwater. This significantly increases the risk of landslides.
“If the ground is burned to a moderate or high severity, you lose all the vegetated ground cover, which, if runoff develops, has nothing to slow it down,” Smith said.
Smith compares the situation to rain falling on a parking lot.
“It flows very quickly, getting to streams much faster than usual,” he said “It also picks up ash and burned sediment, which instead of becoming water, it makes it more viscous and it becomes very thick.”
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West Kelowna and Peachland Conservative MLA Macklin McCall says he flagged the landslide risk along Westside Road as a priority to the province earlier.
“There could have been more proactive work happening, like land rehabilitation, erosion control, replanting, after the fire which would have curbed the risk,” McCall said.
McCall stresses the importance of treating landslide mitigation with the same urgency as wildfire prevention.
“We take a lot of time to respond to wildfires and work hard at that, but the threat of landslides has increased because of the fire, so I do think more attention should be given to this.”
The Ministry of Transportation and Transit told Global News debris removal is underway. Once completed, staff will be able to better estimate the duration of the road closure.
Currently, Westside Road remains closed in both directions between Main Street and Denison Road, and there is no information on the condition of the road below.
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