Amidst the battle against fierce wildfires that have ignited homes, approximately 15,000 households in British Columbia, Canada, have been instructed to evacuate.

West Kelowna, a city of 36,000 residents, witnessed a considerable number of structures catching fire, leading to the evacuation of over 2,400 homes.
The entirety of the province has been placed under a state of emergency due to the multitude of fires burning across its expanse.

In the northern reaches, a massive fire steadily approaches Yellowknife, the capital of Canada's Northwest Territories.

Despite an official evacuation deadline passing, nearly all of the city's inhabitants had departed, with approximately 19,000 of its 20,000 residents having evacuated.

While some chose to stay behind, the plea was made for non-essential individuals to leave, given the potential impacts on highways and the airport due to the wildfires.

In British Columbia, evacuation orders swiftly expanded from covering 4,000 homes to encompass around 15,000 within a mere hour.

Additionally, another 20,000 homes remain on alert. Premier David Eby acknowledged the rapidly evolving situation and anticipated a daunting challenge in the days ahead.

On social media, he declared this year's wildfire season to be the most severe in British Columbia's history and announced a provincial state of emergency to ensure rapid access to necessary resources for supporting affected communities.

He said that more and more people were being evacuated, warning that "emergency orders could include travel restrictions to specific areas if people do not respect our calls to avoid non-essential travel".

Canada is having its worst wildfire season on record, with at least 1,000 fires burning across the country, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre (CIFFC).

Experts say climate change increases the risk of hot, dry weather that is likely to fuel wildfires.

Extreme and long-lasting heat draws more and more moisture out of the ground - which can provide fuel for fires that can spread at an incredible speed, particularly if winds are strong.

Earlier, West Kelowna fire chief Jason Brolund described the wildfire as "devastating".

"We fought hard last night to protect our community. We fought 100 years' worth of fires all in one night," he added.

Local officials have already reported "significant structural loss" in the area, including in Trader's Cove, just north of West Kelowna.

No deaths have been reported so far.

Juliana Loewen lives in Kelowna - a larger twin city of West Kelowna on the eastern shore of Okanagan Lake. She told the BBC how locals had watched a plume of smoke coming over the mountainside like an "ominous cloud of destruction" and how some on the Trader's Cove side jumped into the lake as the fire spread and exit routes were blocked.

Her brother and grandmother fled to her house after "the fire jumped very quickly from one tree to an entire area, threatening an entire residential community".

Local residents are used to the fires because of a "California-style climate" in the area - but the heat, dryness, and wind seen in recent days had created the "perfect conditions for a firestorm", Ms. Loewen added.

The airspace around Kelowna International Airport has now been closed to everything other than aerial firefighters.

It is good to be safety conscious and heed any necessary warning.

Be safe

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