Evacuations ordered as wildfires flare in B.C.’s Okanagan

SUMMERLAND, B.C. — Evacuation orders and alerts have been issued in parts of British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley after a cluster of wildfires broke out after a lightning storm that swept across the southern Interior.

BC Wildfire Service spokesperson Kevin Skrepnek said Thursday that a blaze burning four kilometres south of Peachland on the west side of Okanagan Lake was one of the most serious, but it was not the only active fire.

The so-called Mount Eneas fire prompted evacuation orders in the regional districts of Central Okanagan and Okanagan-Similkameen.

Okanagan Lake Provincial Park was one of several campsites and nine properties evacuated late Wednesday as the Regional District of OkanaganSimilkameen declared a state of local emergency.

Flames from the Mount Eneas fire also jumped Highway 97 on Wednesday, Skrepnek said.

A second fire, identified by Skrepnek as the Peachland

Creek blaze, led to the evacuation of 34 properties early Thursday just north of Summerland, and those residents were urged to register at the reception centre in Penticton.

Across Okanagan Lake, an evacuation alert was posted for a third wildfire estimated at more than two-square kilometres, burning in Okanagan Mountain Provincial Park just outside the southern limits of the City of Kelowna.

About a dozen fires had been sparked in the Okanagan corridor in a 24-hour period, Skrepnek said, making the Kamloops Fire Centre the busiest of the provincial fire centres.