killed an 80-year-old woman<\/a> and burned toward Summerland, a community of about 12,000 people roughly 300 kilometers (185 miles) east of Vancouver.<\/p>\nHugh Murdoch of the British Columbia Wildfire Service said crews face a \u201cmonumental task\u201d in steep terrain and hot conditions, with burning embers igniting new fires beyond the main perimeter and limiting opportunities for firefighters to attack the blaze directly.<\/p>\n
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police have opened a criminal investigation into the cause of the fire, which broke out Friday. The woman died in Meadow Valley, west of Summerland, while trying to escape, authorities said.<\/p>\n
The fire has destroyed numerous homes, but officials said dangerous conditions have prevented crews from completing damage assessments.<\/p>\n
Summerland Mayor Doug Holmes warned Monday that the town\u2019s roughly 12,000 residents should not expect to return home soon.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to brace ourselves for what\u2019s there or what\u2019s not there,\u201d Holmes said at a briefing, his voice breaking. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be hard. It\u2019s going to be really hard. We all know people who have lost homes. And those people need our help.\u201d<\/p>\n
About 100 wildfires<\/a> were burning across British Columbia, roughly half of them out of control. The British Columbia Wildfire Service also warned of a high risk of new lightning-caused fires in the province\u2019s central Interior and Okanagan region.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PENTICTON, British Columbia — About 100 firefighters from Mexico were expected to arrive Tuesday to help battle a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164720,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[17,12962,8721,592,2758,218],"class_list":["post-164719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-canada","tag-climate-and-environment","tag-fires","tag-general-news","tag-wildfires","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164719","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=164719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164719\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}