Residents of Clinton in the British Columbia Interior are fleeing from a wildfire that village and regional authorities say poses an immediate and significant threat to their lives.

Clinton Mayor Roland Stanke said the situation in the community of several hundred residents was “extremely bad.”

“I’m gonna lose my house any minute. It’s horrible,” he said in a brief interview late Friday.

Stanke said he got out in the afternoon and had been watching the fires advance via cameras set up at his home, saying that what he saw was bad.

Anyone in Clinton or south of the village is being told to immediately evacuate south on Highway 97 to Kamloops, while residents north of Clinton to Chasm should use Highway 24 and head to Kamloops North.

The regional district said evacuation orders now cover more than 470 properties in and around Clinton and on the Bonaparte Plateau.

It said residents in the evacuation zone must leave immediately, and no one must enter the area “due to immediate danger to life safety caused by the Fiftynine Creek wildfire” northwest of the village.

The BC Wildfire Service said the fire had pushed past containment efforts on its southwest flank, with aggressive fire behaviour forcing firefighters to retreat.

“Crews have been pulled back to safe areas and will assess for opportunities to reengage,” the service said in an update.

The service said the fire was showing rank-five behaviour on a six-rank scale, meaning an extremely vigorous fire burning in the crowns of trees, with ground firefighting operations restricted.

Clinton is one of three B.C. communities that are under threat from complexes of major wildfires that had rapidly grown, merged and displayed aggressive behaviour on Friday.

The British Columbia government said before Clinton’s evacuation that roughly 1,200 properties were under evacuation orders across the province, double the number on Tuesday and including the entire community of Boston Bar in the Fraser Canyon, about 200 kilometres northeast of Vancouver.

The Anderson Creek and Ainslie Creek fires have now combined, and with the Brunswick Creek fire they form an out-of-control complex of blazes that surrounds Boston Bar and spans about 340 square kilometres.

The Fiftynine Creek fire is threatening Clinton two hundred kilometres to the north.

It had grown from about 100 square kilometres on Thursday afternoon to more than 167 square kilometres on Friday.

The Ministry of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness also said an estimated 6,400 properties were under evacuation alert across B.C., with residents told to be ready to leave at short notice.

Most of those are in Kimberley, in southeast B.C., where the Bootleg complex consists of several fires.

The updated numbers came as roughly 120 wildfires blazed across B.C. late Friday, mostly in the southern and central Interior, with about 35 having started in the previous 24 hours.

Colton Davies, an information officer with the Thompson-Nicola Regional District, had said earlier Friday that as many as a dozen people had already lost their homes in the fires near Clinton.

Most were vacation or secondary homes, although some were primary residences, he said.

Another 15 properties had non-residential structures burn down, with most of the destruction around the southeast portion of Big Bar Lake.

Davies added that wildfire conditions had escalated over the past week due to hot weather.

“We’ve been dealing with some pretty significant changes on the fires that are already happening, so I just want people to be aware,” he said.

The district is also dealing with the fires around Boston Bar, expanding an evacuation alert due to the Ainslie Creek fire on Friday to around 110 properties roughly 32 kilometres southeast of Merritt.

The BC Wildfire Service said protecting structures around Boston Bar was the priority as firefighting efforts continued there.

Authorities also upgraded an evacuation alert to an order just before midnight Thursday, covering the Hells Gate to Alexandra Lodge area, south of the town, while an evacuation order south of Clinton was also expanded.

The Regional District of East Kootenay said about 5,400 properties within the city of Kimberley, and 66 properties in the St. Mary Lake area, are under the alert due to a cluster of wildfires west of the city.

The district said two new overnight wildfires were burning along the St. Mary River about 22 kilometres south of Kimberly, while another burned north of Fairmont Hot Springs in the Columbia Valley.

“We are anticipating there may be other starts today as a result of last night’s lightning and given the hot, dry conditions and potential wind over the next few days,” it said in an update Friday.

Hugh Murdoch, incident commander for the fire burning near Kimberley, said there were seven fires that crews were closely watching in the region, and that the fire behaviour “has been held in check for the most part.”

But Murdoch said the weather forecast is far from favourable, with no rain in sight and temperatures above seasonal.

The impact of the wildfires was also being felt beyond the three B.C. communities under direct threat.

BC Hydro said households across the province may be experiencing flickering lights and power interruptions or fluctuations due to the wildfire activity near Clinton, and crews cannot access the site to make repairs to equipment.

Residents of Clinton in the British Columbia Interior have been ordered to evacuate due to a wildfire that village authorities and the Thompson-Nicola Regional District say poses “a significant risk to life.”

Anyone in Clinton, or south of the village of several hundred residents, is being told to evacuate south on Highway 97 to Kamloops, while residents north of Clinton to Chasm should use Highway 24 and head to Kamloops North.

The regional district says evacuation orders now cover more than 470 properties in and around Clinton and on the Bonaparte Plateau.

It says residents in the evacuation zone must leave immediately, and no one must enter the area “due to immediate danger to life safety caused by the Fiftynine Creek wildfire” northwest of the village.

The BC Wildfire Service says the fire has pushed past containment efforts on its southwest flank.

It says the fire’s activity is so aggressive that crews have been pulled back to safe areas.