Here in British Columbia, we have spent the summer running from cruel wildfires

Small fires crackle into life on the hills around us at the slightest provocation. Creeks swell with flash floods, as upland snow melts at record speed. Our town’s beloved colony of great blue herons fall stunned out of the trees in their dozens. Animals, from cougars to rattlesnakes, leave their hidden places to seek water. The temperature has risen, and stalled, at a nearly unbearable 45C.

This is what a heat dome feels like in Vernon, a community in the British

Columbian interior in Canada.

It’s been quite the summer in British Columbia (BC), where a brutal heatwave has given way to wildfires. At 49.6C, the village of Lytton set a hotter record than there’s ever been in Las Vegas. The fires have burned nearly 8,582 sq km of forest since the spring and caused evacuation orders to be issued across the province. Lytton and another nearby community, Monte Lake, have been destroyed by the vengeful climate.

Our fire, here in Vernon, announced itself with a wave of thick smoke and a glowing red horizon that made us think of JRR Tolkien’s Mordor. At midnight, an evacuation order was issued for the west side of the Okanagan Lake, where members of the Okanagan Indian Band live among enclaves of retirees, ranchers and back-to-the-landers. Soon after, two exhausted evacuees arrived at our door with their dogs, cats and belongings; they are friends of ours, to whom we had promised refuge.

As the fire grew across the lake over the next few days, we found ourselves talking with hushed voices. Unable to ignore the red glare on the horizon, we felt awestruck by the ash floating from the sky, covering our decks, outdoor tables and car windshields. We shared photos of the piles of burnt forest debris, mainly small black twigs and needles, that had washed ashore on the lake’s beaches. We spoke obsessively of the air quality index, which I estimated had reached 45 times the World Health Organization exposure recommendation, ranking it as one of the worst on the planet.

Sometimes it was not ash, but stillglowing embers that floated over to our side of the lake. Although the water provided a natural barrier to the front of the fire, it was being breached by these small missiles, and all of us had to look lively for any fires that started up under these tinder-dry conditions.

As the situation worsened, an evacuation alert for Vernon was announced, stirring us all into action. My husband and I started packing. What do we need to live on? What don’t we want to lose to the fire? My mother was trying to do the same next door, but she was hampered by my bewildered father who has dementia. My daughter ran over to help.

Eventually, we assembled a convoy of vehicles, packed to the brim and ready to move our three-generation family, our twice-evacuated friends and our assortment of pets. We worried about what it would be like if the