Having had a runaway bestseller with The Ice Storm in 1998, editor/publisher Doug Gibson commissioned Kelowna Daily Courier reporters Don Plant and Ross Freake to produce a hardcover keepsake of this summer's forest fires in B.C., Firestorm: The Summer B.C. Burned (M&S, 2003). The book sold so well they produced a follow-up entitled Stories from the Firestorm (M&S, 2004). Freake was born in Newfoundland and attended Humber College and York University. He is a former managing editor of The Daily Courier, Cambridge Reporter and Kamloops Sentinel.

[BCBW 2004] "Disaster"