Defence Minister David McGuinty says the Canadian Armed Forces is prepared, if asked, to help British Columbia deal with its wildfire crisis.

A wildfire in B.C.’s Interior, which killed one person and displaced more than 20,000 others, grew dramatically over the weekend as firefighters worked around the clock to defend homes and communities.

At an unrelated news conference in Ottawa on Monday, Mr. McGuinty said the government is monitoring the situation.

“It’s now really a question of assessing, hour by hour, as we have been doing all weekend and most of last night, to see what the status is,” he told the media.

“The Canadian Armed Forces are at standby, are in direct constant contact with our government operations centre, our emergency preparedness folks, the B.C. government, their officials.”

Mr. McGuinty said Ottawa has not yet received a formal request from the provincial government for emergency preparedness. “Should we do so, we are prepared to assist.”

On Sunday, the federal Emergency Management Department said it was auditing spaces in the region that could serve as shelters for evacuees.

The Bald Range wildfire was discovered Friday on the west side of Okanagan Lake. It tore through 50 square kilometres in its first three hours and doubled in size by Saturday, when B.C. declared a provincewide state of emergency, as people fled their homes en masse. By Sunday, it had grown to 136 square kilometres.

Evacuation orders cover the entire district of Summerland, a community in the hot and dry Okanagan Valley that is home to about 12,000 people and is known for its orchards, vineyards and wineries.

About 8,000 others were forced from their homes in Peachland and nearby communities on Saturday, and a new evacuation order was issued Sunday for the Brent Lake and Shingle Creek area. Thousands of other properties are under evacuation alert. Around 55 people have been airlifted out of affected areas.

Nicole Bonnett, a fire information officer with BC Wildfire Service, said crews have maintained a 24-hour response since the fire began and were working Sunday on several fronts to protect communities and contain the blaze.

Penticton RCMP confirmed Sunday that northwest of Summerland an 80-year-old woman, who was attempting to leave her Meadow Valley home with a family member on Friday, died suddenly. Police believe the death to be a result of the wildfire; the BC Coroners Service is conducting an investigation to confirm the exact cause.

Summerland resident Brandon Bishop had just arrived home from work Friday afternoon when his wife alerted him to a possible fire up the hill. He hopped back in his truck to investigate, quickly locating the flames and BC Wildfire Service personnel who told him the wind was pushing it toward town.

“At that point, I turned around and called my wife and told her right then and there, ‘I think you should pack. I think we’re going to be leaving here pretty quick,’” he said in an interview on Sunday.

Mr. Bishop raced home. As the sky turned a menacing orange, he and his family quickly loaded their most precious cargo into two pickup trucks: their eight-week-old daughter, his in-laws, two dogs, a cat, five reptiles, some clothes and small valuables.

The Bishops were down the road when they doubled back to grab frozen breastmilk for their daughter. By then, the flames were within 100 feet of the house. They would confirm later through another resident’s video that the home his wife grew up in was gone.