Reinforcements have arrived in the battle against a deadly wildfire that has forced some 20,000 people out of their homes along the western shores of Okanagan Lake in British Columbia’s southern Interior.
Hugh Murdoch with the BC Wildfire Service had told a briefing late Monday that 100 Mexican firefighters would arrive to join the fight against the blaze that claimed one life and caused significant destruction as it roared towards Summerland, and the service said they were on the ground Tuesday.
Their addition brings the number of firefighters working the Bald Range blaze to 193, with the service saying clearer skies overnight had contributed to increased fire activity.
Cliff Chapman, the wildfire operations director with the service, told a provincial fire and drought briefing on Tuesday that conditions were so dry overnight that even without much wind, “we were seeing very challenging conditions.”
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That included elsewhere in the southern B.C. Interior, Chapman said, such as the Brunswick complex of fires near Merritt that expanded east towards the Coquihalla Highway, with an evacuation alert now overlapping the key connector with the Lower Mainland.
Murdoch had said earlier that crews faced a “monumental task” with the Bald Range fire, which grew to 178 square kilometres by Tuesday, but he was confident it was being adequately staffed.
“It’s a true fire fight for the crews,” he said, citing the steep terrain and hot conditions, along with “spotting” that was triggering outbreaks beyond the fire perimeter, limiting opportunities for direct attack.
The dryness of the region is also a challenge; asked about the possibility of arson or the use of an “accelerant” to start the blaze, Murdoch said forest fuels “can’t get much drier.”
“Mother nature has provided all the accelerant that was necessary,” he said.
RCMP have meanwhile launched a criminal investigation into the cause of the fire that erupted Friday and caused the death of an 80-year-old woman in the Meadow Valley area, west of Summerland, as she tried to escape.
The fire destroyed numerous homes, razing most of the tiny community of Faulder, although official damage assessments have yet to take place due to the dangerous conditions.
Summerland Mayor Doug Holmes told the briefing on Monday that the community’s 12,000 residents won’t be going home any time soon, but they should prepare for what awaits them in the evacuation zone.
“We need to brace ourselves for what’s there or what’s not there. It’s gonna be hard. It’s gonna be really hard,” he said, his voice breaking.
“We all know people right now who have lost homes. We all have friends who have lost homes and those people need our help.”
The BC Wildfire Service has said it was expecting “a high potential for lightning-caused wildfire starts” in the central Interior and the Okanagan.
About 100 fires are burning across B.C., with about half out of control.