Evacuation orders and alerts issued for rapidly growing wildfire west of Peachland

The Glen Lake Wildfire, 15 km west of Peachland, grew from 100 ha as of 3:30 p.m. Sunday to 455 ha by 8:30 p.m. Sunday evening.

It has triggered evacuation orders for eight recreation properties along the Glen Lake Forest Service Road.

Evacuation alerts have also been issued for a dozen properties west of Vaseux Lake, mostly on Willowbrook Road, along with the Ripley and Madden lake recreation sites.

The fire was discovered at 6:25 p.m. on Saturday and, according to BC Wildfire Service, it is human caused.

“The fire is classified as Out of Control and the fire behavior observed today is between Rank 3 to 5 (moderately vigorous surface fire to extremely vigorous surface fire or active crown fire),” BC Wildfire Service posted on its Facebook page Sunday afternoon.

The BC Wildfire Ranking system describes Rank 5 as an “organized crown fire front” with moderate to long-range spotting.

The smoke has generated a smoky skies bulletin for the Central Okanagan.

“Smoke may be highly visible to the surrounding communities and travelers along Highway 97C,” the Facebook post says. “We would like to remind the public to practice caution and stay clear of active wildfire suppression activities.”

The Central Okanagan Emergency Operations Centre has been activated, as well as at the Regional District of Okanagan Similkameen with evacuation alerts.

Three other major wildfires continue to burn out of control in the Thompson, Shuswap and Okanagan regions.

That includes the McDougall Creek Wildfire in and around West Kelowna, now at 13,970 ha, the Bush Creek East Wildfire in the Shuswap at 43,380 ha and the Rossmoore Lake Wildfire south of Kamloops at 11,382 ha.

Some evacuation orders and alerts are still in effect due to the McDougall Creek and Bush Creek East wildfires.

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