{"id":160907,"date":"2026-08-08T18:23:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-08T18:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/160907\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T18:23:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T18:23:08","slug":"a-fast-moving-wildfire-forces-more-than-20000-people-to-evacuate-in-western-canada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/160907\/","title":{"rendered":"A fast-moving wildfire forces more than 20,000 people to evacuate in western Canada"},"content":{"rendered":"

More than 20,000 people have been ordered to leave their homes in western Canada overnight as a fast-moving wildfire grew rapidly and raced toward towns along British Columbia\u2019s Okanagan Lake, destroying homes in its path<\/p>\n

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — More than 20,000 people were ordered to leave their homes overnight in western Canada<\/a> as a fast-moving wildfire grew rapidly and raced toward towns along British Columbia\u2019s Okanagan Lake, destroying homes in its path.<\/p>\n

The entire community of Summerland, home to about 12,000 people, was ordered evacuated, along with about 8,000 people in and around nearby Peachland. Officials had not determined how many homes were destroyed.<\/p>\n

The Bald Range wildfire was first reported on Friday evening but grew to about 50 square kilometers (19 square miles) within hours, overwhelming the smaller community of Faulder and covering the roughly 15 kilometers (9 miles) to Summerland at extraordinary speed.<\/p>\n

Erick Thompson, an emergency official with the Regional District of Okanagan-Similkameen, called it one of the \u201cquickest-moving, fastest-growing\u201d wildfires the region had experienced.<\/p>\n

Thompson eventually had to abandon the emergency operations center and evacuate his own family.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had to leave the EOC to come and get my family to leave this area. We\u2019re heading south,\u201d he said in a video posted early Saturday from his vehicle as traffic backed up around him.<\/p>\n

Canada has endured increasingly destructive wildfire seasons<\/a> in recent years, forcing mass evacuations and repeatedly sending smoke across large parts of Canada and the United States.<\/p>\n

Videos posted on social media appeared to show multiple homes burning as residents fled along roads with flames on both sides.<\/p>\n

Homeowner Kerry Gold and her husband, Mike Elsinga, fled around 12:30 a.m. after watching flames spread beyond nearby mountains.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s scary. It\u2019s moving fast,\u201d Gold said.<\/p>\n

The couple, who recently moved from the city of Vancouver, had packed bags, prepared a carrier for their cat and planned to help a disabled friend evacuate.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou want to stay here and protect your home, but you also don\u2019t want to get caught in it,\u201d Elsinga said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than 20,000 people have been ordered to leave their homes in western Canada overnight as a fast-moving…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":160908,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[525,17,12962,43935,592,4045,2758,218],"class_list":["post-160907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-business","tag-canada","tag-climate-and-environment","tag-evacuations","tag-general-news","tag-natural-disasters","tag-wildfires","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160907","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=160907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160907\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}