12,000 evacuated as fast-moving wildfire ravages Canada's Okanagan region

Earl Kurz has watched wildfires circle his town of Peachland for a decade. He and his wife have lived on the shores of Okanagan Lake for thirty years, long enough to know the rhythm of fire season in British Columbia's wine country. But nothing prepared him for Friday, when the Bald Range wildfire erupted and consumed fifty-three square miles in a matter of hours. For the first time in all those years of close calls, Kurz was forced to leave. What he found when he returned to survey the damage was almost beyond language. "It's total incinerated destruction," he said, standing in the wreckage. "The hot spots are just barren areas of nothing except twelve inches of ash."

More than twelve thousand people remain under evacuation orders across the Okanagan region. Officials are still tallying the homes lost to the fire, which as of Monday remained uncontrolled and actively burning. An eighty-year-old woman died while attempting to evacuate on Sunday. The forecast offers no relief: dry lightning, high temperatures, and strong winds are expected to continue, creating conditions for new fires to ignite at any moment.

Keegan Radomski, eighteen, lived in Summerland, a town just south of Peachland on the lake. Her family had occupied the same house for three decades—her grandmother built it. On Friday evening, they were eating dinner when they noticed smoke in the distance. Less than four hours later, Radomski was grabbing her mother's ashes and running as flames breached the property line. "We've had a lot of close calls before, but it's never been like this," she told the BBC. "You always think it's not going to be you, and then it's you." She still does not know if her home survived. The speed of the fire had caught everyone off guard, even those who had lived with the threat their entire lives.

Douglas Holmes, the mayor of Summerland, acknowledged the scale of loss without yet knowing its full measure. "Some people's homes have been lost, but we don't know how many," he said. "I think we need to prepare for the fact that everybody is going to know somebody that has lost a home." The evacuation happened so quickly that some residents in the farming community had no choice but to abandon their livestock. Kaz Nowlin, a volunteer coordinating animal rescues across the region, has managed to save dozens of animals since fires began last month, including fifty-seven horses. He is working to obtain permits to enter Summerland and retrieve fourteen alpacas and eight horses still stranded there. "It's for the animals' well-being," he said. "They don't deserve what's going on."

The Bald Range fire is one of more than one hundred burning across British Columbia as of Monday. Seventy of those ignitions occurred within the past week alone. The region is gripped by extreme drought—Okanagan Lake sits at its lowest level since 1992, according to the Okanagan Basin Water Board. Premier David Eby declared a state of emergency over the weekend, urging residents to follow evacuation orders and warning that the fires are moving "incredibly quickly."

This disaster arrives in the shadow of another: the Bradley Creek fire, which burned through the same region and destroyed more than two hundred homes before crews managed to contain it through what officials called "tireless work." Across the border in Washington State, more than sixty-five thousand people have been forced to evacuate as drought conditions fuel fires there as well. In Europe, Spain and France are battling their own historic fire seasons—France experiencing its worst fires in two decades, Madrid facing what officials say are the worst fires the region has ever recorded.

Wildfire is part of the natural cycle of Canada's boreal forest. But climate scientists have documented a clear shift: hotter, drier weather driven by climate change has made fires more intense and more frequent over the past decade. In 2023, Canada experienced its worst wildfire season on record in terms of total area burned. The pattern is accelerating, and the Okanagan—a region known for its vineyards and scenic beauty—is now learning what that acceleration means in real time.