Kids’ camp cut short as wildfire blown near

Kids spent the night camping out in Emmanuel Church in West Kelowna after Maple Springs Bible Camp voluntarily evacuated its campers Thursday night as a precaution.

The weeklong camp had been scheduled to end at noon Friday.

Winds were driving the Munro Lake fire closer to the camp at 5247 Inga St. in Peachland Thursday, prompting evacuation alerts and orders nearby.

“We did see the fire coming,” said Mark Wilson, camp director. “We just wanted to be extra cautious because we have so many campers.”

Around 70 kids were taken by bus to Emmanuel Church in West Kelowna.

Wilson said the evacuation went smoothly and the camp leaders were great.

It was pretty late by the time campers arrived at the church, said Wilson.

It had been skit night at camp, so campers went ahead with their skits in the gym and played a little game before going to bed.

Many parents opted to pick up their children at Emmanuel Church Thursday night, but about 20 campers spent the night at the church, where their families picked them up Friday morning.

“We just played games and had our skit night, which was very fun,” said Cohen Reimer, 11, one of the campers who stayed overnight at the church.

Cohen said that although the campers had heard the storm with the lightning earlier in the week, he hadn’t heard about the fire until the evacuation.

Angel Yurle was at Emmanuel Church just after 8 a.m. Friday morning, picking up her daughter Ashlin, who was a leader in training at the camp.

“I’d rather do it now, because maybe we have to evacuate our house,” she said.

The family had been evacuated last spring because of a mudslide and had just finished repairing their home before the fires began.

Yurle had already packed the back of her vehicle Friday morning in case an evacuation order from the Mount Eneas fire, estimated at 1,000 hectares Friday morning, was issued before she could return to her home in the Garnet Valley in Summerland.