20,000 evacuees fled ferocious B.C. wildfire. These are some of their stories

PENTICTON — The explosive wildfire that roared down on Summerland, B.C., forced about 20,000 people to flee over the weekend.

Some spoke of a scramble for safety, and the later realization that their homes or other properties had been destroyed.

Here are the accounts from some of those who escaped:

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Dayna Joynt was bringing a Pokemon cake she made for her granddaughter’s birthday to a family party on Friday when the fire rolled into Faulder, west of Summerland.

She said the scene was chaotic as her partner and his brother decided to stay to fight the fire. She said she tangled with police for “holding things up” as they tried to enforce the evacuation order, and was pepper sprayed and briefly handcuffed.

Eventually she drove out, surrounded by flames.

“I got all of the kids and their vehicles out the best I could. And then by the time I left, I was engulfed in flames. My whole van is scorched — I melted a tire, I hit a truck going out. There was not a soul around,” she said.

Joynt said her daughter and two grandchildren were taken out by helicopter, while she credited her boyfriend and his brother with using hoses to save their home and about four more in Faulder.

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Kyla Gaudiuso received a photo of the ridge where her house once stood in Faulder, B.C.

The ridge was entirely engulfed in fire, confirming her home had been destroyed.

She said she had been driving home from nearby Penticton on Friday afternoon when she got a call from her son about the fire, having been told about it by a firefighter friend. Her husband was home and couldn’t see anything.

But by the time she got home, “our whole front yard just looked like a tornado.”

“The wind was blowing so hard and you could just smell the crackling in the air.”

She said it was “pandemonium” as emergency workers tried to get everyone to safety.

While she knows her home is lost, she said she wants to see it in person to believe it.

“I would love to just see like a picture or know for sure what’s left on our property because I’m kind of one of those people — it doesn’t really seem real,” Gaudiuso said.

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Erin Carlson, whose family owns Carcajou Fruit Company Ltd., said everyone she knows got out, but 30 of their workers had to be evacuated by helicopter after the fire cut off road access.

“It was very apocalyptic,” she said of the wildfire. “We’ve been watching that hillside dry out for a really long time. There’s obviously always the fear that fire will happen, but the size and scope and speed at which this thing moved, I think it took, well I know it took everyone by surprise.”

She said the house that she grew up in was still standing, but everything else is gone; the packing house, the office, the cold storage and all the facilities that their employees need to work at the site have been destroyed.

Carlson said the damage to their 40 hectares of cherry trees is unknown.

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Anette Boulet, a Summerland resident, said the fire “looked like doomsday” as it bore down.

“We were just in our house and seeing big black ashes coming down and we stayed in our house as long as we could — until we saw the ridge of fire,” she said.

She fled before around 4:30 a.m. on Saturday with her husband, son, mother-in-law and five dogs, and did not know if the home that they moved into four months ago was still standing.

“You couldn’t see barely. It was, it was just dark, and the ridge, the ridge of fire just coming towards you,” she said, her voice trembling.

“There’s no words to express it. The fear.”

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Greg Krauter’s herd of goats drew a crowd outside the evacuation centre in Penticton. He uses them as “lawn mowers” but became aware of their therapy powers when he gained attention while walking them without a leash in Kelowna.

Krauter evacuated with the goats from his Summerland home early Saturday when the power went out. He’s moved them many times, but never in the middle of the night.

“So, they were a little shocked by that, but as soon as we got in the truck, it was just another driving day and they all relaxed and went, ‘where are we going?’”

Krauter went back Saturday to assess the damage and said his home was still standing, but he saw many burning stumps and a geyser of natural gas at a burned home where the homeowner failed to shut off their gas.

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Dawn Wertz was in Summerland celebrating her niece’s birthday when large chunks of ash began to fall on the party.

Wertz, who is from Summerland but now lives in Red Deer, Alta., said she and her relatives watched plumes of flame race down a mountain late Friday.

They grabbed photos off the walls and important documents and fled south for Penticton.

“The ashes were falling on us when we were outside for the party. They were loonie-sized, and that was when it was only 50 hectares,” she said of the fire, around 7:15 p.m. Friday.

By Monday the fire had grown to 155 square kilometres.

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Kerry Gold and her husband Mike Elsinga had just moved to Summerland from Vancouver to a newly restored heritage home.

She described the fire as scary and moving fast.

Elsinga said the fire was heralded around 7 p.m. Friday by a “massive plume” of smoke. Then Gold said there was “nothing but flames in the near distance.”

“This is crazy,” Gold said. “I’ve never seen anything like it because I went from being in the city to suddenly being in the Okanagan and discovering what this means.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 10, 2026.

Canadian Press Staff, The Canadian Press