A fast-burning wildfire threatening West Kelowna, B.C., is challenging firefighting crews as they brace for what the operations director with BC Wildfire Service has predicted will be the most challenging days of the season so far. Smoke from the McDougall Creek wildfire is seen from Westbank, B.C., Thursday, Aug. 17, 2023. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Joe O'Connal
Homes were still burning in West Kelowna, B.C., on Friday after a devastating wildfire destroyed a significant number of properties overnight, in a battle that the city’s fire chief likened to “100 years of firefighting.”
Residents and officials described frightening and uncanny scenes — people leaping into Lake Okanagan to escape the fire, and the historic Lake Okanagan Resort engulfed in flames as explosions rang out. One evacuee watched remotely though a doorbell camera as trees outside his home burst into flame.
Evacuation zones were being expanded across the lake into the city of Kelowna late Friday afternoon, widening the scale of the crisis.
The fire was “exponentially worse” than expected, said Jason Brolund, chief of the West Kelowna fire department.
Wildfires across the province experienced what the BC Wildfire Service called “extreme” growth Thursday and Friday amid a weather shift that brought high winds and dry lightning.
About 4,500 people across British Columbia were under evacuation orders and 23,500 under evacuation alerts, a provincial briefing was told.
Police and firefighters were going door to door in West Kelowna, where thousands of residents were ordered to evacuate from more than 2,500 properties as the hills surrounding their Okanagan community erupted in flames.
RCMP say they are deploying officers to secure evacuation zones.
Brolund told the briefing that some first responders became trapped while rescuing people who didn’t leave as the McDougall Creek wildfire advanced rapidly toward the community, describing the development as a firefighter’s “worst nightmare.”
“There were a number of risks taken to save lives and property last night,” Brolund said. “It didn’t have to be that way.”
Brolund also said a number of people were rescued from Trader’s Cove in West Kelowna after jumping into the water as a “last resort” to escape the flames.
Central Okanagan Regional District chairman Loyal Woodridge said there was no known loss of life.
Brolund said the fire fight wasn’t over and residents would be facing another “scary night” on Friday, with conditions projected to be even worse than those that whipped up the blaze Thursday.
In the latest development, the University of British Columbia Okanagan campus in Kelowna was ordered evacuated Friday afternoon as a wildfire possibly sparked by flying embers from the West Kelowna blaze encroached on some parts of the city of more than 150,000 residents.
An evacuation order was also issued Friday for residents of about a half dozen properties in the city’s Glenmore area, and hundreds of other residents nearby were put on evacuation alert, advising them to be prepared to leave on a moment’s notice.
Kelowna’s landfill, located in the Glenmore area, was closed to non-commercial traffic and the city’s courthouse was closed Friday afternoon due to the wildfires.
The BC Wildfire Service said the McDougall Creek fire had grown to 68 square kilometres in size, up from 11 square kilometres Thursday afternoon.
Brolund said it was a “devastating night,” probably the toughest of his career.
“We fought hard last night to protect our community. It was like 100 years of firefighting in one night,” he said.
The fire chief said “night turned to day” as the fire lit up the sky.
He said crews could not verify the number of homes destroyed because counting them wasn’t possible with fires actively burning.
“There was a significant number of structures lost,” Brolund said. “We need to stop this fire before it continues. Then we’ll do the counting. There are homes burning out there right now.”
West Kelowna resident Les York was in a boat on the lake when he watched the Lake Okanagan Resort burn down.
“We saw the lower building start to burn and we could hear explosions,” he said.
“It was crazy … you’d drive along and there’d be a house gone, and then you drive along and there’d be like a tree on fire in the middle of rocks.”
Steven Francis said he has had to flee the community three times in the nearly three decades he’s lived there.
But on Thursday, the “fiery snake” of flames that ripped through trees left him breathless.
“I was standing in awe,” Francis said. “It was a huge, monstrous, aggressive fire “¦ it stretched and stretched.”
Embers from the McDougall Creek fire are suspected to have jumped Lake Okanagan and caused the spot fires on the eastern shore, although Brolund said the cause could not be confirmed.
Those spot fires triggered a state of emergency in Kelowna, which is on the east side of the lake, around midnight. An emergency had already been declared Thursday in West Kelowna and by the Westbank First Nation.
In addition to the West Kelownaproperties under an evacuation order, a further 4,800 are under an evacuation alert, with residents told to be ready to flee at short notice.
Metro Vancouver resident Darren Chen arrived in Kelowna for a vacation Tuesday. On Thursday night, he watched as clouds turned red and black across the lake.
“On my way to downtown Kelowna, I saw the fires and the trees as tall as buildings bursting into flames,” said Chen, who is now trying to make his way home.
B.C. Premier David Eby issued a statement saying “our hearts are with the people, communities and First Nations adversely affected by wildfires in B.C.”
“It was a devastating evening fighting fires and working to protect people and homes, with extremely difficult and rapidly evolving conditions continuing today.”
He urged people to obey evacuation orders, saying they “are not made lightly.”
Beyond West Kelowna, an evacuation alert was issued late Thursday for 216 properties in the village of Lytton, threatened by the Kookipi Creek wildfire in the Fraser Canyon.
The wildfire service said hot, dry conditions resulted in “extreme fire behaviour” by the blaze, which crossed Highway 1 and caused the closure of the highway in both directions.
Cliff Chapman, operations director with the wildfire service, told the briefing that flames were driven by high winds and became up to 150 metres tall.
He said the magnitude of the fire led some to mistake its huge smoke cloud for a volcanic eruption.
The Squamish-Lillooet Regional District meanwhile expanded an evacuation order in response to the fire northwest of Lillooet. It said RCMP and other authorities would be “expediting” the evacuation.
Chapman echoed Eby and said “now is not the time to ignore an evacuation order.”
“Our priority right now is human and responder safety,” he said, citing incidents in West Kelowna in which RCMP and firefighters had to be sent back into the fire zone to help people get out.
Such events took a “significant toll” on the mental health of staff, he said.
Emergency Management Minister Bowinn Ma told the briefing that non-essential travel to Central and Southeast B.C. should be avoided. Firefighters should be given “space that they need to keep us safe,” she said.
Federal Emergency Preparedness Minister Harjit Sajjan said he was watching the situation in the Okanagan closely, calling it “very concerning.”
“Last night even I was getting pictures and video sent by close friends of mine and our government operations centre contacted the BC Operations Centre to get an update,” he said during a Zoom news conference Friday.
“We have offered up full federal support in support of this fire and I encourage all the residents to listen to the guidance of the local authorities in making sure they are safe.”
Fire crews had been bracing for what Chapman predicted would be the most challenging days of the province’s record-breaking wildfire season.
Chapman said Thursday that a cold front was bringing high, unpredictable winds and dry lightning.
Of the 382 active fires in the province, 159 were out of control and more than a dozen were considered either highly visible or a threat to a community.
West Kelowna resident Francis, his wife and their four pets made their way to a crowded evacuation centre Thursday night and on Friday morning were sent to what he was told was one of the last available hotel rooms in the city.
He observed the fire situation through his home’s doorbell camera, which now served as a “fire monitoring system,” he said.
He watched online Thursday as small groups of trees burned outside the house.
On Friday, the home still appeared to be intact.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 18, 2023.
– With files from Brittany Hobson in Winnipeg, Bill Graveland in Calgary and Nono Shen in Vancouver
