British Columbia Premier David Eby declared a state of provincial emergency Friday evening, amid a rapidly escalating wildfire crisis.
“We are facing the worst wildfire season in our province’s history — this unprecedented situation has come to a head this evening,” Eby said.
“In the last 24 hours the situation has evolved and deteriorated quite rapidly. In just the last hour, we’ve gone from about 4,500 homes under evacuation to about 15,000 (people) being evacuated from their homes across the province.”
Eby said the emergency declaration was being implemented “to ensure we have rapid access to any tools we may need to respond to this situation.”
Emergency Management and Climate Readiness Minister Bowinn Ma repeated a call she’d made earlier in the day, urging people to avoid all non-essential travel to fire-affected areas in the Central Interior and the province’s southeast.
Ma said the growing number of evacuees, coupled with the number of emergency workers flooding the fire zones, meant there was a critical shortage of accommodations.
“We are strongly recommending that people with plans to travel to fire-affected areas throughout the central interior and southeast in the coming days to cancel those plans, we need tourists and travellers to take the situation as seriously as the residents of these areas do,” Ma said.
“By declaring a state of provincial emergency we are able to enact extraordinary powers that among other tools could include legally enforceable orders that restrict travel to specific areas if people do not adhere to our calls to avoid non-essential travel to the central interior and southeast.”
Late Friday, federal Emergency Preparedness Minister Harjit Sajjan posted to social media, saying he had spoken with B.C. Forests minister about the worsening situation, and that the federal government stood ready to support the province in any way needed.
As of Friday evening, there were 380 active fires across B.C.
At a briefing earlier Friday, Ma said that about 2,500 people had been forced from their homes in West Kelowna, Kelowna and surrounding communities. Emergency officials have said a “significant” number of structures had been destroyed, by the McDougall Creek fire, and Ma said officials were still working to determine the extent of the damage.
The fire, discovered Tuesday, has grown to more than 6,000 hectares in size, according to the BC Wildfire Service.
Ma also urged people not to travel to the central Interior or southeastern British Columbia during the current flare up in fire activity.
“The central and southeast are facing high risks of wildfires due to the developing situation,” she said.
“If you must travel, study the BC Wildfire Service interactive map and emergencyinfobc.ca to learn about active evac alerts and orders. We all need to give BC Wildfire Service personnel the space they need to keep us safe.”
Highway 1 is already closed through from Hope to Lytton, where the Kookipi Creek fire has pushed into the Fraser Canyon, forcing evacuations.
“We are facing extremely challenging fire situation — we remain in the midst of a strong weather pattern that is creating sustained winds and dry lightning. This has significant effects throughout the province,” Forests Minister Bruce Ralston told the afternoon briefing.
“We had significant growth of existing fires and some new fires started overnight … The impact will be felt throughout the weekend, and we undoubtedly will see more fires and more extreme fire behavior in the coming days.”
Cliff Chapman, provincial operations director for the BC Wildfire Service, said windy weather on the heels of a heat wave that saw temperatures top 40 C in many areas of the Interior, exacerbated fires everywhere in the province on Thursday.
“I’ve been in BC Wildfire Service my entire career, over 20 years, and there’s only a few dates that stick out for me as dates that will always be engraved in my head. Yesterday is one of those days,” he said.
“We knew the weather was coming, we knew it was going to have a big impact on the fires, and it did. And now we’re seeing the catastrophic impact fires can have as they interface with communities, critical infrastructure and humans.”
Refusal to evacuate
Chapman said crews handled several incidents during Thursday night’s destructive firefight involving people who had refused to obey evacuation orders.
In more than one case, RCMP, fire department and BC Wildfire Service staff were forced to return into the evacuation zone to perform rescues, he said.
“That puts their lives at risk — obviously the people who choose to stay’s lives are at risk — and has a significant toll on the mental and physical health of our staff, and those who are there trying to get people out of the way of fires that are very unpredictable, moving extremely fast, at rates that we rarely see in British Columbia,” he said.
“Now is not the time to ignore an evacuation order. We need you out of your homes, we need you out of the way, so we can focus on trying to protect those homes and trying to steer the fire away from critical infrastructure.”
Ma added that no matter how upset or anxious evacuees are about the possibility their home may have been damaged by a fire, no one should return to an evacuated area under any circumstances.
Aggressive fire growth
The BC Wildfire Service is responding in force to multiple fires across southern British Columbia that have seen aggressive growth thanks to the shift to windy weather, Chapman said.
The McDougall Creek fire, threatening the West Kelowna area, saw “significant” growth overnight, expanding six-fold.
“We saw significant challenges with the fire interfacing with people’s homes, and structures and critical infrastructure,” he said.
“The fire continued to display aggressive fire behaviour from early in the day all the way through until this morning, and it continues to display aggressive fire behaviour.”
Air tankers are currently working to contain the fire, along with ground crews including multiple municipal fire departments and structure protection.
Fires have also ignited on the east side of the lake in Kelowna proper, but Chapman said officials had yet to confirm whether the McDougall fire “jumped” the lake, or if the new fires were unrelated.
The Kookipi Creek fire also saw explosive growth, sweeping down the Nahatlatch drainage into the Fraser Canyon proper, he added. That fire is so aggressive, flames have been observed towering over trees as high as 200 feet tall.
To the northwest, three fires burning west of Lillooet that are now being called the Casper Creek complex have also flared dramatically.
“We had one of our fires in that complex jump Carpenter Lake and Road 40, which is the one access egress route, main transportation corridor into Gold Bridge, which is now under evacuation order,” he said.
The Stein Mountain fire in the Stein Valley and the Downton Lake fire near Gun Lake have also seen major growth, he said. The Squamish-Lillooet Regional District significantly expanded an evacuation order in the area, which includes Gold Bridge and Seton Portage, Friday.
Structure protection has been deployed “to do our best to protect the homes and cottages that are on these lakes,” Chapman said.
Crews had better news to report in the battle against several other major fires, however, Chapman said.
In B.C.’s southeast, winds did exacerbate the Horsethief Creek wildfire, but forecast dry lightning didn’t show up in large volumes and was accompanied by some precipitation.
However, the wildfire service expects that fire will still challenge its guards for the next 24 hours.
The Ross Moore Lake fire, which has triggered evacuation orders south of Kamloops, did not see growth on the scale as some other fires as well, he said, with assigned crews having some success on suppression efforts.
The fight against the Lower East Adams Lake fire north of Chase, similarly, was also going well. Crews conducted a successful planned ignition there Thursday, and while a few spot fires have escaped containment, firefighters are attacking them.
“It will be our continued effort throughout the day to try and hold and secure that line where we did the planned ignition in the interest of protecting North Shuswap and beyond,” he said.
Ma urged anyone facing possible evacuation to reach out to friends and family ahead of time to try and arrange accommodation, as hotels are already heavily booked due to high tourism season.
She also advised people to pre-register for emergency social services, and to have a grab-and-go bag ready. You can find out more about how to prepare for an evacuation here.
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