Here for Our Community: How the Okanagan Rallied After the Bald Range Wildfire

On the night of August 7, 2026, Chef Ned Bell had a room booked at Coast Capri Hotel in Kelowna. He never checked in. Hours earlier, a wildfire had ignited in the hills northwest of Summerland and grown so quickly that the highway into the South Okanagan closed before he could make the drive. What started as a missed reservation turned into something else entirely, the beginning of a project that would go on to help feed the very community the fire had upended.

This is the story of that wildfire, the Bald Range Wildfire near Summerland, and of a corner of British Columbia that spent the back half of August looking out for its neighbors: farmers, evacuees and each other.

What Happened During the Bald Range Wildfire Near Summerland

The Bald Range Wildfire broke out about 15 kilometers northwest of Summerland on Friday, August 7, 2026, and within three hours had already burned through roughly 5,000 hectares. Unusual west winds pushed the flames downhill toward Okanagan Lake rather than the more typical uphill spread and heat off the ground accelerated those winds from around 20–30 km/h to 40–50 km/h. BC Wildfire Service crews described the conditions that weekend as explosive. By August 10, the fire covered more than 15,000 hectares; within another two weeks it had grown past 25,000.

Evacuation orders went out for the entire District of Summerland, about 12,000 people, along with roughly 8,000 residents of neighboring Peachland. Thousands more across the surrounding Okanagan were placed on evacuation alert, ready to leave on short notice. Firefighting crews, more than 300 personnel at the peak, along with helicopters, heavy equipment and international support from Mexican wildland firefighters, spent weeks bringing the fire under control. By early September, BC Wildfire Service had downgraded Bald Range to “held,” meaning it was expected to stay within its current perimeter, while crews continued mop-up work.

How Kelowna’s Hotel Community Supported Wildfire Evacuees

With Summerland and Peachland emptied out, thousands of displaced residents needed somewhere to go, and Kelowna’s hotel community became part of the answer. The province block-booked more than 1,000 hotel rooms across Penticton, Kelowna and West Kelowna for evacuees, along with close to 1,000 beds in group lodging. Reception centers were also set up in Penticton and West Kelowna, with an evacuee helpline running extended hours to keep up with the calls.

Coast Capri Hotel, in Kelowna, was among the local hotels that helped accommodate displaced residents when evacuation orders were issued. The hotel team mobilized to free up as many rooms as possible for those displaced. One by one, families arrived with pets and possessions and were settled into comfortable temporary accommodation.

But there’s no place like home, and the hotel team recognized that evacuees needed a place to decompress. This meant opening the hotel’s Horizon Event Centre as a free community space with coffee, water, light refreshments, somewhere to charge a phone and just sit for a minute, for anyone who needed it, whether they were staying at the hotel or somewhere else nearby. 

The outdoor pool opened up too, with the usual restaurant-purchase requirement for non-guests waived for anyone in temporary accommodations to have a place to take their kids. At the front desk, the team collected donations around the clock for Mamas for Mamas, the Kelowna-founded charity that’s spent the past decade helping local families in crisis: N95 masks, packaged snacks for kids, new underwear and socks in all sizes, hygiene products, school supplies, the unglamorous, essential things a family grabs last and needs first.

How the Summerland Sauce Project Helped Save the Harvest

Chef Ned Bell’s missed stay at the Coast Capri Hotel soon became part of a much bigger story. The Okanagan-born chef behind Chefs for Oceans, co-owner of Hatch Hospitality and Creative Advisor for Okanagan College’s Centre for Food, Wine and Tourism, never made his stay. Instead, he spent the following weeks in a kitchen with his friend Thomas Tumbach, a farmer who’d lost his home and several buildings on his Garnet Valley property to the fire.

Tumbach’s challenge was one many Okanagan farmers and growers were facing: produce at peak ripeness and nowhere to sell it. Road closures had cut off deliveries; farmers’ markets had been canceled, and a wildfire-shortened tourist season meant fewer restaurants buying local. So Tumbach, through the LocalMotive Farmers Network Cooperative he helps run, started buying that harvest directly from affected farms in meaningful volumes.

Bell and other local chefs joined the effort by donating their time in the kitchen, turning that produce into seasonal sauces and preserves. Ned’s Ratatouille, made with eggplant, squash and peppers, was one of the first batches sold through the LocalMotive Low-Waste Market in Penticton.

The resulting Summerland Sauce Project set a goal of raising $20,000, enough to turn roughly 1,000 pounds of at-risk produce into 500 litres of sauce, with proceeds flowing back to the farmers behind it, including those who lost crops outright. It also became an early piece of something bigger: LocalMotive began working toward a permanent Summerland Food Hub, giving growers a place to process and store harvests at scale the next time the valley needs it.

How Coast Capri Hotel Is Supporting the Summerland Sauce Project

The recovery in Summerland and Garnet Valley isn’t finished, and the Summerland Sauce Project’s work is really just getting started. Farmers are still rebuilding what the fire took, and every jar of sauce sold only goes so far.

Throughout September 2026, Coast Capri Hotel is running the Members’ Fall Harvest Savings offer as a way to put a stay behind that recovery. Coast Rewards Members save 25% on stays of two nights or more when they book and stay by the end of September. For every booking made through this offer, 15% will be donated to the Summerland Sauce Project, supporting Chef Ned Bell, Thomas Tumbach and the farmers behind it.

Here for the Okanagan, Then and Now

The Bald Range Wildfire is no longer in its most active phase, but recovery continues. Summerland is still rebuilding. Farmers like Thomas Tumbach are figuring out what a farm looks like after losing a home to the fire that ran through it.

What’s stayed constant through all of it is how the Okanagan showed up for its own: a hotel opening its pool and meeting space to strangers, a chef who never made his booking turning up in someone else’s kitchen instead, a farming cooperative finding a way to save a season’s harvest one jar at a time.

None of it undoes what the fire took. But it’s the kind of quiet, practical care that makes a community feel like one, especially during difficult times. For Coast Hotels, being here for our community means supporting the local farmers, producers and neighbors who help make the Okanagan what it is.