Ottawa to match money raised by Red Cross for Summerland wildfire relief<\/p>\n
Published 3:36 pm Friday, August 28, 2026<\/p>\n
The federal government will contribute funds for the recovery efforts following the Bald Range wildfire.<\/p>\n
On Aug. 28, Eleanor Olszewski, Minister of Emergency Management and Community Resilience, announced that the federal government will match, dollar for dollar, money raised through the Red Cross\u2019s fire appeal.<\/p>\n
That appeal began Aug. 4 and through to Sept. 5. The money will benefit those affected by wildfires, with the Red Cross determining how the funds will be spent.<\/p>\n
Olszewski said the province will work to pay out the money as quickly as possible.<\/p>\n
She added that the federal government has changed its way of providing funding following disasters.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe totally understand how devastating this is for communities,\u201d she said. \u201cIt is an imperative to get money to communities as quickly as we can.\u201d<\/p>\n
Olszewski said she has seen some of the wildfire devastation in Summerland earlier in the day.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy heart absolutely goes out to every single person impacted by what happened here. It\u2019s completely heartbreaking in every way,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Summerland Mayor Doug Holmes said funding is needed during the recovery efforts.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe more funding the better. We know people are going to need help,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He added that Summerland is working to develop a recovery plan for the community.<\/p>\n
The wildfire began late in the afternoon of Aug. 7 and has reached a size of 25,191 hectares. It destroyed an estimated 40 structures in Summerland along with around 150 in the surrounding areas.<\/p>\n
During the worst of the wildfire, the entire community of Summerland, along with surrounding areas were under evacuation orders.<\/p>\n
At present, the fire is described as being held.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ottawa to match money raised by Red Cross for Summerland wildfire relief Published 3:36 pm Friday, August 28,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":875210,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194295],"tags":[49,48,79004,20739,6090],"class_list":["post-875209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ottawa","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-okanagan","tag-ottawa","tag-wildfires"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=875209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/875210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=875209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=875209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=875209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}