B.C. wine industry steps up to help Summerland compatriots through wildfire crisis
Summerland winery owners Christine Coletta and Steve Lornie sprung into action Aug. 7 when a friend called a little after 5 p.m. to warn them that “there’s smoke behind your place” in Garnet Valley, just north of town.
They have a practised fire-response plan . Lornie immediately went to Garnet Valley to move equipment to safety, turn on fire hydrants and open access gates. Coletta went to their Summerland vineyard home to gather essential paperwork and start making arrangements to get staff out.
It was in the middle of all that, even before the Bald Ridge wildfire exploded into an all-consuming inferno, an email pinged on her phone from a friend at the Andrew Peller winery that simply asked, “ What do you need ?”
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“I’m really lucky,” Coletta said. “I’ve been in this business for 35 years (and) I know a lot of people, and I just got an email from Ben Bryant at Peller.”
She said her friends at Peller were able to take in nine of their temporary foreign workers, even handling paperwork to transfer work permits so they wouldn’t be out of work during the crisis.
“They made it happen, so I’m eternally grateful to them,” Coletta said. “But that’s not uncommon That’s kind of how our industry rolls.”
The owners and employees of some 24 wineries in and around Summerland were among the 20,000 residents who had to pick up and flee the Bald Ridge fire, which exploded overnight in a conflagration that swept over 95 square kilometres and prompted government to declare a provincial state of emergency.
As quickly as the extent of the crisis began to emerge, Jeff Guignard, CEO of the Wine Growers of B.C., said he and his members started getting word out that their colleagues were going to need help and, “What do you have available?” Guignard added that before he knew it, offers started coming in — for accommodation, refrigeration, storage or help moving livestock.
“Anything they needed,” he said. “The whole community just came together to help the evacuation. It was really inspiring.”
5News aggregated this summary from the outlet’s public feed. The full article, with all the context, is on vancouversun.com — the content belongs to Vancouver Sun.
