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Officials issued an evacuation order for an area south of Pemberton, B.C., on Wednesday night due to a rapidly growing wildfire.
The Signal Hill fire was first spotted Wednesday afternoon, and quickly grew to 10 hectares in size. It is burning about five kilometres from Highway 99.
The evacuation order applies to One Mile Lake Park, “to provide safe working space to crews supporting fire operations,” the Village of Pemberton shared.
The fire is believed to be human caused, the label applied to any fire not sparked by lightning.
The B.C. Wildfire Service (BCWS) said it had deployed an initial attack crew of 20 personnel, one helicopter, an air tanker and a skimmer group.
It was one of 11 new fires sparked in the last 24 hours across the province.
Crews were also called to a new fire near the Coquihalla Highway about 25 kilometres north of Hope.
Smoke and aircraft were visible to drivers, but the fire did not pose an immediate threat to structures or critical infrastructure, the BCWS said.
Wildfire crews also continue to battle a pair of out-of-control wildfires on either side of Highway 1 near Boston Bar known as the Brunswick complex.
While the estimated size of the Brunswick Creek and Ainslie Creek wildfires — about 194 square kilometres (19,400 hectares) combined — has not grown much in recent days, the BCWS said it was showing increased fire behaviour with warming temperatures.
Multiple evacuation orders and alerts remain in place due to the Brunswick complex.
Across B.C., there were 29 active wildfires burning on Wednesday, 10 of them classified as out of control.
Dry lightning sparks concerns
Lightning strikes that officials fear could spark a wave of new wildfires in British Columbia also began to arrive on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, the B.C. Wildfire Service (BCWS) warned that dry lightning, forecast from the Okanagan east to the Alberta border, combined with ongoing drought and high winds could lead to a “significant wildfire event.”
“We’ve started to see some of that lightning activity in the southeast corner of the province and that’ll continue most likely through the next 48 hours as the system moves through B.C.,” fire information officer Aydan Coray said Wednesday.
Officials are particularly concerned about the western Cariboo region, along with the southern and southeast interior, she explained.
“They’re expecting lightning with no accompanying precipitation or very little, if any, and that’s likely to continue through Thursday and Friday,” Coray said.
It comes as Environment Canada has issued heat warnings for the Okanagan, Shuswap, South Thompson and Fraser Canyon.
“We are expecting daytime highs in the mid to high 30s and also overnight lows in the high teens,” Environment Canada meteorologist Colin Fong told CBC News.
“Friday we expect the conditions to cool down, so basically kind of a two day event.”
Most of B.C.’s southern Interior was classified at a high fire danger rating, with extreme ratings in parts of the Kamloops, Cariboo and Southeast fire centres.
Coray said the wildfire service has been pre-positioning ground and air resources throughout southern B.C. in anticipation of a possible surge in new fires.
She urged anyone who sees a new fire to report it immediately.
Amid the increasing fire risk, a campfire ban is slated to take effect across most of the Coastal Fire Centre Thursday at noon. Campfires were already prohibited in the Kamloops Fire Centre.
Less restrictive bans covering fires bigger than two metres in height and three metres wide are in place throughout the rest of the province, with the exception of parts of the northeast.
