B.C. officials confirmed on Thursday that structures have been destroyed or “impacted” by the Fiftynine Creek wildfire, burning near the Village of Clinton.
“I’d say we have at least a dozen properties where structures have been fully destroyed, again homes or secondary properties or other structures, even garages or sheds,” Colton Davies with the Thompson Nicola Regional District told Global News.
“This fire came up so fast on Friday and a lot of folks would not have had time to prepare for even the evacuation alert before it was switched to a tactical evacuation order.”
That fire forced an expansion of an evacuation order and alert on Thursday as firefighters battled the out-of-control blaze, now estimated at 11,000 hectares.
In the Fraser Canyon, where three massive fires, called the Brunswick Creek Complex, are burning, the past few days have been heartbreaking for a farm owner in North Bend.
They have been watching through doorbell cameras as flames burned closer to their home.
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“I obviously didn’t sleep all night,” Tami Dalpadado told Global News.
She said she only had minutes to turn on the sprinklers and grab her pets, but she had to leave her farm animals behind.
“Unfortunately, the fire was like 500 meters from us, so the goats, we opened their stalls and let them run,” she said.
Dalpadado’s home is still standing, but she said the outbuildings and equipment have burned in the fire.
At least seven other structures have been lost in the Fraser Canyon so far, wildfire officials said.
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The Brunswick Creek Complex has burned tens of thousands of hectares.
“The fire behaviour is still too high for direct attack, so our crews are working structural protection and structural defence down around the communities and along and the other values kind of along that Fraser Canyon corridor,” Gordon Robinson, the fire information officer for the Brunswick Complex with the BC Wildfire Service, said.
The wildfires are also disrupting travel.
Highway 1 remains closed through the Fraser Canyon due to the Brunswick Complex and Highway 3 is shut down through Manning Park due to the Norwegian Creek wildfire.
The Coquihalla Highway remains the only highway connecting the Lower Mainland and the Interior. A truck fire near Kamloops shut down the southbound lanes for a while on Thursday afternoon.
Hot and dry conditions and more wind remain in the forecast and wildfire officials warn that the threat is far from over.
Police and wildfire crews are again urging anyone under an evacuation order to leave immediately, saying every resident who stays behind can hinder firefighting operations.