'A ghost town' - Yorkshire student caught up in Bald Range wildfire crisis

A Yorkshire student caught up in an escalating wildfire crisis thousands of miles from home has described the Canadian city where she is staying as a “ghost town”.

Shannon Lawrie, a student at Leeds Trinity University, is visiting her partner in Penticton, British Columbia, where the pair have watched the Bald Range wildfire grow and residents evacuated from nearby communities.

The fire began near the town of Summerland, around 12 miles north of Penticton on the opposite side of Okanagan Lake, on Friday and has since spread to 15,590 hectares, or around 60 square miles.

More than 20,000 people have been forced to evacuate, while British Columbia has declared a provincial state of emergency. An 80-year-old woman died while trying to evacuate her home, according to Canadian authorities.

Shannon said she was attending a summer festival in Penticton on Friday when an emergency alert on her phone warned of the fire.

From the city, Shannon could see the flames across the lake.

“We could see it all glowing and it was just crazy,” she said.

At first, Shannon and her partner were not particularly concerned. They had been told the fire was contained and Penticton was some distance from the main blaze.

But by the following morning, the situation had changed, with Penticton becoming one of the main places receiving people who had fled their homes.

Evacuees have gathered at emergency centres and car parks have filled with cars and recreational vehicles.

Local residents have also offered homes and spare rooms to evacuees, while tourists, who flock to the city in summer, have left the area to free up accommodation.

But despite the fire itself not reaching Penticton, the smoke and continuing emergency have transformed the atmosphere in the city.

“It feels like a ghost town,” Shannon said. “People aren’t really going outside because of the smoke.”

She said the speed at which the situation developed had been particularly unsettling. Shannon has visited Canada regularly but said she had never experienced anything like the current wildfire crisis.

The situation has also left Shannon’s family watching events unfold from thousands of miles away back in the UK.

They have been keeping in regular contact with her, in case she needed to be evacuated and return home.

Meanwhile, the latest update from the BC Wildfire Service warned of “challenging” fire behaviour as crews continued working to contain the blaze, with changing weather conditions expected to affect its spread.

A Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office spokesperson said it had not been approached for consular assistance in Canada, but that its staff “stand ready to support British nationals 24/7”.

The fire remains out of control, with evacuation orders and alerts continuing to affect communities across British Columbia.

It is one of more than 100 wildfires currently burning in the province, while fires in Ontario have already burned around 735,000 hectares.