Residents of a village in B.C.'s Fraser Canyon have been told to evacuate the area after a fast-moving wildfire swept in on Wednesday evening.

Mayor Jan Polderman says he told everyone to leave Lytton, a community of some 250 people, as the situation rapidly deteriorated. He signed the official evacuation order at 6 p.m. PT.

"It's dire. The whole town is on fire," Polderman told CBC News. "It took, like, a whole 15 minutes from the first sign of smoke to, all of a sudden, there being fire everywhere."

He said he told residents to head for the nearby community of Boston Bar, and was on his way there himself. A reception centre has also been set up in Merritt to the east.

"At the First Nation band office, the fire was a wall about three, four feet high coming up to the fence line. I drove through town and it was just smoke, flames, the wires were down," Polderman said.

Earlier this week, Lytton, about 260 kilometres northeast of Vancouver, recorded the highest temperature ever seen in Canada on three consecutive days, topping out at 49.6 C on Tuesday as an unprecedented heat wave scorched Western Canada.

Erica Berg, a provincial fire information officer, said the evacuation order was issued about an hour after the blaze began but she did not know the size or the cause of it. She said the B.C. Wildfire Service is diverting crews and equipment from other areas to respond to the fire.

Winds of up to 71 kilometres an hour were pushing the fire north into the community as of 7 p.m. PT, according to CBC meteorologist Johanna Wagstaffe. She said the hot, dry and windy conditions in the area could mean the fire is moving at 10 or even 20 kilometres an hour.

Michelle Nordstrom with the Thompson-Nicola Regional District said local officials are scrambling to coordinate the evacuation as it happened so suddenly and Lytton residents were fleeing the town in any direction they could.

Firefighters were already dealing with another two wildfires in the area. The George Road wildfire, burning south of Lytton, was last estimated to be 350 hectares at 2:26 p.m. PT, and the nearby Conte Creek fire was estimated at 1.5 hectares.

Edith Loring-Kuhanga, an administrator at Stein Valley Nlakapamux School in Lytton, fled to Lillooet in a caravan with about 100 other local residents.

"It's just unbelievable. You can't even comprehend it," she told CBC Radio. "Our entire town is gone."

Loring-Kuhanga said that when the fire was first reported, she was asked to set up a muster station at the school, but soon got the word that it wouldn't be possible to stay. She and others left town without their livestock, pets or treasured belongings like photo albums.

"There's so many people in shock. We're all in shock," she said.

DriveBC is reporting that fires have closed highways to the north and south of Lytton. As of 6 p.m. PT, Highway 1 was closed between Boston Bar and Spences Bridge, while Highway 12 is closed from Lillooet to the junction with Highway 1.

Devastating.

https://globalnews.ca/news/7994950/evac ... heat-wave/

Hopefully everyone made it out of there.

Maybe Trudeau will take time out from his virtue-signalling to help Canadians in need!

*sarcasm*

-J.

What do you expect him to do? Fly a water bomber? Fight the fire himself?

Dozens of families forced to flee their homes in a small B.C. village as fire raced through the area are working Thursday to find loved ones scattered in the evacuations, as emergency officials urgently try to account for everybody in the community.

People living in Lytton, B.C., about 260 kilometres northeast of Vancouver, were forced to run from their homes with little to no notice Wednesday, racing out of town in every direction as smoke and flames swallowed the community in minutes.

Online community groups were filled with posts from people desperate for information about family, friends and pets left behind. The challenge Thursday will be trying to account for residents and connect them with their families, officials said.

A Lytton man says his parents died in the wildfire that swept through town on Wednesday night, destroying the downtown strip and its surrounding buildings.

Jeff Chapman told Postmedia News that the couple in their 60s took cover in a hole in the ground as their house between the railway tracks and the downtown core began to burn.

Chapman said he ran toward the tracks. Moments later, he saw a power pole explode and fall on top of the hole containing his parents.

“It’s their grave now,” he said on Thursday morning, waiting outside a motel in Boston Bar.

Those poor folks in Lytton. They had minutes to flee. Hearing it was a town fire, not a wildfire. Not wanting to spread rumours, but word is that it was probably a spark from a train.