by Russ_Byth » Fri Aug 23, 2013 5:46 am
Last Tuesday, August 13, Kim Calloway came into the radio station and wrote what would turn out to be his last story. It was his recollections of the Okanagan Mountain Firestorm in 2003. It was in the form of a Letter to the Editor - Russ
(After more than 50 years on air as a radio reporter, news anchor and talk show host, Q1031's KIM CALLOWAY is retiring from the airwaves. While many of Kim's ea...rlier radio glory days involved covering on site events like the Bobby Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King assassinations, sitting around with Pierre Trudeau, going face to face with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, hanging with Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison and Robbie Robertson and Ronnie Hawkins and so many more--Kim was equally thrilled to be a big part of Kelowna's 2003 Firestorm coverage, exactly ten summers ago. Here's the Firestorm on radio, from Kim Calloway's perspective.)
It was, of course, still CKOV-AM, and we were still much into talking to and with our many Kelowna listeners.
Today I still get feedback from how much good CKOV, it's staff and it's listeners did for the community as those great flames either hoverered overnight along the Mission ridges--they made the community smell like a huge ashtray as we'd look outside. We were all inside our Lakeshore Road studios at Lakeshore and Cook, technically just inside a 'forbidden' equipment zone. But the authorities saw the need for a local talk radio station to be kept alive, and we were it.
Pretty much 24/7, myself and many others stayed on the air, interviewing our own listeners at night, but also talking often with then-Premier Gordon Campbell, the late great MLA Sindi Hawkins, then-Senator Ross Fitzpatrick and his spouse Linda and son Gordon, who had lost grapes in a fire-singed field.
Ordinary..well let's call them extraordinary listeners, called us to help locate horse trailers to move desperate animals as the big flames got closer. And when real fires started to happen with at least 234 Kelowna homes destroyed, I remember how calm I needed to be on air, with 30,000 people evacuated, some of them twice. No one got hurt, no fenders dented on an old lift bridge, so maybe the calm approach helped. I'd forever like to think so.
People, I learned evacuated strange things, not knowing if their house had burned down. One lady, nothing but duffels of photo albums; memories. When the real fires hit, Gerry Zimmermann and his KFD crews became national heroes: they could have run the wanted-to-retire Chief for PM..and oh yes, Mayor Walter Gray, often interviewed nationally (ask him about his wet-at-the-knees CTV interview) did get his new bridge--ol' K.C. would never stop braying about a better evacuation route, a newer bridge,at the news briefings.
Ten years on, we're all still gun shy about any kind of smoke. Some people still refuse to rebuild. But a decade later, I remain incredibly proud over how you, Kelowna--and me, local now retired reporter and his many reporter colleagues, showed the world how our city kept it together, and did our community proud. Thank you all for an opportunity to fully report, in 2003, for the city I call my home.
Kim Calloway
Kelowna