B.C. declares state of emergency, Summerland completely evacuated

Good evening and thank you for joining us.Welcome to City News Live at 6.I'm Jeff Sadowsky.We begin tonight with special coverage in the Okanagan, where 20 ,000 residents were evacuated overnight as the Bald Range wildfire, whose growth, officials say, has never been seen before, has raced towards the communities of Summerland and Peachland.It's prompted BC to declare a province -wide state of emergency, with crews still working to rescue people from behind the fire line.Jack, tell us what happened last night.

Thanks, Joe.Well, the fire behavior that we saw last night was simply monstrous.Officials told us today that the flames at times stretched more than 20 stories into the sky.It even created its own weather system, which only drove the fire into more of a frenzy.The fire was reported at around 5 .30 Friday evening and in just three hours it jumped from half a square kilometre in size to more than 50 square kilometres.Now that terrifying rate of speed meant that residents were ambushed by the flames with an evacuation order coming down at 12 .30 at night.

It forced 20 ,000 people, that's every resident of Summerland and many from Peachland where we are this evening, to flee their homes.were pounding on doors, trying to get people to leave the area, with dozens needing to be rescued by helicopters after they got penned in by the flames.We don't know just how many structures have been lost at this point, but there are hundreds of properties within the fire's perimeter.BC Wildfire Service says it's too early to say, only calling the loss significant.We spoke with one evacuee who had to leave everything behind in the village of Falder, which is believed to have been burned to the ground.

It wasn't until we were in the driveway and packedstuff up when the wind really picked up and it became kind of like cyclonic weather is the only way to describe it.And as soon as that happened, that's when I started kind of shaking a little bit.And I think my adrenaline kicked in and we just got out as soon as possible.But there was such a long line of people and people were trying to get their livestock out, trying to get their vehicles and their RVs out.We were all backed up in a line.

This poor woman on the side of the road had a horse in one hand and a dog in the other.And the horse was just rearing up.And all I kept thinking was someone needs to help her.

Oh, my God.

Our house is going to go.

Oh, my God.Will we be able to replace all the things in our home?And I know it's so inconsequential to think about things, but that's our home, like that's our safe space.That's where we have brought up our two children and our happy memories there.And honestly, I don't even I don't even know what the process is going to look like over the next few weeks.We're just going to take it every hour as it comes and and just kind of go from there and just hope that everybody else is doing the same.

Jack, for those people out there, this must be a terrifying ordeal.And this midnight evacuation posed a lot of issues for emergency officials.This area of the Okanagan has a large population of seniors and retirees.What kind of challenges might they be facing right now?

20 ,000 people evacuating all at once in the dark amidst a raging wildfire.That's a nightmare scenario for first responders and they did everything they could to get people out of there.But with an operation this complex, this difficult, this dynamic, we have to prepare ourselves for the news to get worse.We're now learning that there may have tragicallybeen a loss of life as a result of this wildfire.RCMP says they're investigating a potential fatality that was reported by an impacted resident.

It's not clear under exactly what circumstances this potential fatality may have occurred, but the BC Coroner's Service is now investigating.Now, many of those who did make it out are in Penticton, where footage from the town shows community centres where hundreds of people are trying to find accommodations, support and basic needs.People packing whatever they can into suitcases and folks piling what they can into trailers in these thick, smoky conditions.Now, Joe, you mentioned that this area has a lot of seniors, many folks with limited mobility who may need extra help under these circumstances.To make sure they get the help they need, officials are encouraging people to do what they can to be self -sufficient.They say that accommodations are stretched extremely thin and they're asking people who can to stay with family and friends.

Now that's part of why the state of emergency was called.It allows the province to commandeer accommodations and limit local travel.Both of those are necessary right now because as Premier Eby said earlier today, this is now a matter of survival.

For my part, hearing the briefings from the wildfire service, they are talking in terms that I haven't heard before.The lead commander on the site, who was up all night briefing me this morning, talked about this being like a bomb going off in the Summerland region.Category 5 and 6 fires, the terminology they use, but it basically means that the fire goes across the top of the trees.He described flames on a 100 -foot tree, flames going 200 feet above that, and the fire creating its own weather system, which creates lightning, which then feeds on itself, it growing further and further.the initial area where they were throwing all of their resources at the initial attack when it was first spotted, and this is the wildfire service bringing full strength to the initial attack, spreading from that initial site to a thousand hectares in an hour.What I can say is that the province will be there to support families that have been affected by this.

We'll work closely with the federal government on disaster response support and I want to thank those who have stepped up to volunteer.We've donated to the Red Cross to support families.And the Prime Minister has committed the work of his ministers to support the province as well in our time of need.I want to thank all of the international firefighters who have come.The focus in this moment is on ensuring that people survive, protecting life.And the secondary priority, protecting property, homes, vital infrastructure, power lines.

health facilities, making sure that those are available for communities after the disaster.

And Jack, this is certainly a dire time out there.We've heard that the BC Wildfire Service have had to conduct dozens of rescues and it's been mobilizing significant resources to try to prevent this fire from consuming anything else.This is obviously still a very dynamic situation, but what can you tell us about where things are going right now?

That's right, Joe.Officials say they're throwing everything they can at this fire.And we just had hundreds of wildland firefighters from overseas arrive in the province just in time to help as this wildfire situation spirals.Officials have said they simply haven't seen fire conditions like this, with the high heat, winds and incredibly dry conditions.brought on by a years -long drought making this fire impossible to slow down.

This is many people's worst nightmare and as an organization this is one of the more challenging fires that we have ever faced and we're only in our second operational period.I also before I give an operational update would like to offer my sincere thank you to the BC wildfire service emergency management and climate readiness, fire departments, RCMP, local governments, EOCs, First Nations, First Nations pilots of our aircraft and everyone else who was involved in the effort.Everyone showed up at the fire yesterday wearing their own shirts and their own patches on their shoulders and quickly started to work together to save lives.I am certain that the outcome of this event would have been significantly worse had we not worked together multi -jurisdictionally across this fire.Everybody stepping up to save people's lives in Summerland.Our firefighting aircraft quickly became evacuation aircraft.

Our firefighting response crews quickly started knocking on doors to get people out of the way.We worked through the night to continue that effort with all agencies involved.And I feel very strongly that many lives were saved because of the efforts of so many agencies, and some of which I haven't named.I am so honoured to be part of an emergency management system in British Columbia where people come together in the time of need for those that are impacted.The fire in Summerland last night is going to continue to be challenging.It's going to continue to challenge us today as we see the smoke start to lift, yesterday from an operational perspective this fire we are resourcing this fire significantly we have an incident management team that is taking command we have ground crews that were there overnight all through the night and they will be there and they're showing up today we're working with fire departments we're working with contract crews and we're working with

anybody that we work with on all of our fires to support response to this incident.

crews have been working throughout the day to build containment lines, but the wind is now coming from the west, pushing the fire towards Summerland, which has a population of about 12 ,000.Now, past that is Penticton, whose population of around 37 ,000 is being urged to stay prepared.The fire is now at 100 square kilometres and remains out of control, with some highways in the area closed and many flights in and out of Kelowna's airport cancelled as ash rains from the sky.Evacuation centres have been set up in Penticton and Kelowna, and officials are urging anybody who remains in the evacuation zone to leave the area.Joe?

Thank you so much, Jack.That's our Jack Rapp reporting in the Okanagan, very close to the evacuation zone.Thank you, Jack, for that.And yeah, 104 active wildfires burning throughout the province.It's quite a dire situation.So thank you for getting out there, Jack, and stay safe out there.