Thousands of residents in the British Columbia communities of Summerland and Peachland have been chased out of their homes by an explosive wildfire that sprang up Friday.<\/p>\n
Here is the latest on the wildfire that forced 20,000 to flee:<\/p>\n
9:40 a.m. PT<\/p>\n
A large section of B.C.’s southern Interior is under an orange air quality warning.<\/p>\n
Wildfire smoke blankets the area from the border to the Cariboo region.<\/p>\n
Environment Canada says some regions, including the Similkameen and the central and southern Okanagan, may see some relief from the smoke into the late evening and overnight into Sunday.<\/p>\n
Lower grade yellow alerts also fan out over much of the southern part of province into the central Interior and to the east into Alberta.<\/p>\n
9:30 a.m. PT<\/p>\n
Graham Statt, chief administrative officer with the District of Summerland, says power has been shut off to Summerland and there won’t be potable water to drink.<\/p>\n
However, he says the water pressure remains strong and fire crews are using it to protect the area.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, an emergency reception centre has been set up in Penticton Trade and Convention Centre, south of Summerland.<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
8 a.m. PT<\/p>\n
The BC Wildfire Service says airtankers are dropping fire retardant along the fire’s eastern flank.<\/p>\n
But the wind is fanning the flames, carrying embers up to a kilometre ahead of the main body of the fire.<\/p>\n
The service says the fire behaviour became volatile and eventually compromised both the safety and efficiency of the tankers’ objectives.<\/p>\n
The Canadian Press<\/p>\n
The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thousands of residents in the British Columbia communities of Summerland and Peachland have been chased out of their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":160850,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[40590,17,13929,3948,51709,989],"class_list":["post-160849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-b-c-wildfire-service","tag-canada","tag-fire-crews","tag-mandatory-credit","tag-summerland","tag-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160849\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}