Joe Wagner was heading home Friday afternoon when his wife called to tell him that someone had knocked on their door to warn of a fast-moving wildfire nearing their property in Faulder, B.C., northwest of Summerland.
The general contractor raced home, arriving as the fire closed in. As flames licked at the back of the house, Mr. Wagner rushed to gather their dog and three cats while his wife grabbed their most important documents. Their eldest son, whose family had just purchased a nearby home in December, also prepared to leave.
Overhead, an air tanker approached and dropped fire retardant onto the property. The sticky, red substance splattered Mr. Wagner as he rushed about.
Just as he located their third cat, a police officer pulled up, telling them they had to leave now. Mr. Wagner sent his wife and son off in their cars, then climbed into his work van and peeled down the hill.
“I turned, looked back, and it was just engulfed,” Mr. Wagner said in an interview. “It was just the biggest fire I’ve ever seen.”
The Wagners are among more than 20,000 people who were forced to flee Summerland and nearby Okanagan Lake communities over the weekend because of the Bald Range wildfire. An 80-year-old woman died Friday while attempting to escape, and thousands of others were put on evacuation alert.
A complement of 100 firefighters are expected to arrive from Mexico this week to help fight the fire, doubling the number of firefighters currently on the ground and working around the clock.
Discovered Friday afternoon, the fire tore through 50 square kilometres in its first three hours and doubled in size by Saturday, when British Columbia declared a provincewide state of emergency. By Monday, it had burned 156 square kilometres.
The evacuations have created challenges in finding enough accommodations on short notice. On Monday, B.C.’s Emergency Management Ministry said the province had secured 1,000 hotel rooms in Penticton, Kelowna and West Kelowna, as well as group lodging with nearly 1,000 beds throughout the Okanagan.
Meanwhile, the federal Emergency Management Department said it has provided an initial list of potential federal facilities or sites in B.C. that could be used to house evacuees.
“Our priority is to make sure any federal support is targeted where it is most needed and complements the work already underway in affected communities,” the department said in a statement Monday. It did not say how many facilities and sites were being offered.
A view from Peachland, B.C., shows flames and heavy smoke rising from the Bald Range wildfire near Summerland on Aug. 9.DARREN HULL/AFP/Getty Images
Defence Minister David McGuinty said the military is also prepared to help, should B.C. request its assistance.
“The Canadian Armed Forces are at standby, are in direct constant contact with our government operations centre, our emergency preparedness folks, the B.C. government, their officials,” he said at an unrelated news conference Monday.
Erin Catherall, a fire information officer with the BC Wildfire Service, said Monday that the Bald Range wildfire saw one to 1.5 kilometres of growth on its northwestern and southern portions overnight because of sporadic and shifting winds, conditions that persisted throughout Monday.
Firefighters now face a potential challenge with expected thunderstorms in the Kamloops area northwest of Summerland.
“What this will result in is atmospheric instability, which may push smoke from another fire, the Brunswick Creek wildfire, northwards, so it won’t be covering the Bald Range wildfire,” Ms. Catherall said in an interview.
“The challenge with this is that we actually want smoke in some ways, because when the smoke lifts and we start to see blue sky, that’s when we have direct sun exposure, which will increase temperatures and resulting fire behaviour activity.”
Okanagan fires offer a glimpse of a worsening wildfire crisis
Investigators are working to determine the cause of the fire. Penticton RCMP said Monday it is aware of “several videos and misinformation circulating on social media in which an individual is observed lighting a non-lethal wildlife deterrent device (commonly known as a bear banger).” The video was taken kilometres away from where the fire started, police said, cautioning against spreading false reports.
Mr. Wagner estimates he had 10 minutes to gather belongings before flames consumed the house where he and his wife had lived for 21 years and where they raised their four children.
“We had just brought my mother home to pass, and she had just passed a month prior to this,” he said. “I didn’t even have the chance to get her ashes out of the house. That’s devastating.”
Shawn Campbell, a rancher on the outskirts of Summerland, had spent Friday at the beach with his three children. They returned to their farm and he started making dinner when, around 5:30 p.m., he saw a puff of black smoke rising above the trees.
His phone erupted with calls and texts about the wildfire barrelling toward the property.
“The kids were freaking out. You can see that puff getting closer, and you could start hearing the police and fire trucks coming, telling me to evacuate,” Mr. Campbell said. “It was quite chaotic.”
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While he sent his wife and children to an evacuation centre in Penticton at roughly 11 p.m., the 42-year-old stayed behind with his father, determined to fight to save his home and protect the cattle and horses.
He moved all the animals into a fenced pasture, set up irrigation hoses and cannons on the fence posts, and stood in front of his home with a garden hose and pails of water, waiting for the blazes to arrive.
The flames raced down the hill toward his home, but Mr. Campbell doused the fires licking at the fence line, keeping it at bay. The wildfire shifted and torched his neighbour’s home, adding more fuel as it grew.
“We were surrounded at one point, where we couldn’t have left even if we wanted to,” he said.
He battled the flames for about six hours until 5 a.m. on Saturday, when the blazes subsided, saving his ranch and his home. Since then, Mr. Campbell has been feeding animals at other farms and updating their owners on how their livestock are faring.
Authorities urge residents under evacuation orders to leave immediately, warning that delays can put both residents and emergency responders at risk.
B.C. wildfires: What is a state of emergency?
Brian Callow, owner of mushroom farm What The Fungus near Summerland, wasn’t concerned at first when he looked up at 7 p.m. on Friday and saw red skies.
But when he heard the fire was 15 kilometres away, Mr. Callow rushed to set up sprinklers around his home, located on the same property.
He sent his wife and two children away in the family’s motorhome to a Summerland RV park, while he intended to stay and keep water pumping. But by 12:30 a.m., the smoke and flames became too much, and he abandoned the property to join his family.
“The fire just started coming down the mountain and lots of smoke was starting to fill the farm. It just felt like I wasn’t able to see,” he said.
Mr. Callow met his family at the park and travelled to Penticton early Saturday as flames closed in.
Later in the morning, he saw a video on social media that showed his farm’s barns and storage buildings all torched. But a neighbour who had returned told him the house survived.
Mr. Callow said he lost his entire business, and he isn’t sure what to do because the farm wasn’t insured as rates were too expensive.
“It’s unimaginable having to rebuild 12 years of your life. With how much money we put into it and how much time, I don’t know how we’re going to do it,” he said.
“But I do know that there’s a strong community in Summerland and around the farm that I’ve built.”
With a report from Ian Bailey in Ottawa