B.C. wildfire evacuees told to brace for devastation, as RCMP launch criminal probe

PENTICTON — Heartbroken Okanagan-area officials have told wildfire evacuees to prepare themselves for the level of destruction left by a deadly blaze in B.C.’s southern Interior that police say has triggered a criminal investigation.

The out-of-control Bald Range fire is on the outskirts of Summerland, whose mayor told the community’s 12,000 residents they would not be returning to their homes on the shores of Okanagan Lake any time soon.

“We need to brace ourselves for what’s there or what’s not there,” he said, his voice shaking with emotion at a briefing in nearby Penticton on Monday evening.

“It’s going to be hard. It’s going to be really hard. We all know people right now who have lost homes. We all have friends who have lost homes and those people need our help.”

The briefing also heard from RCMP Supt. Beth McCandie, who said a criminal investigation was underway into the cause of the wildfire that forced 20,000 to flee over the weekend.

She said police also wanted to stamp out misinformation about how the fire started.

Widely circulated social media videos show someone lighting a bear-banger device, with users putting the blame on them. But McCandie said the incident occurred kilometres from where the Bald Range fire started last Friday.

The person in the video was interviewed by police as a witness and not a suspect.

“The public is cautioned against making false statements and to stop the continuation of misinformation on social media,” an RCMP statement said.

McCandie told Monday’s briefing that the probe was launched as a result of “early information” from the BC Wildfire Service.

She said investigators would look into all reports of suspicious activity that may have led to the start of the fire, and that police want to speak to witnesses who may have seen something around Princeton-Summerland Road and Bathville Road, near the Crump and Trout Creek recreation sites.

That includes dashcam footage, videos, photos and information from the afternoon of Aug. 7.

Forests Minister Ravi Parmar said earlier Monday there was false information circulating about the cause of the fire, which the wildfire service says is undetermined.

RCMP said Sunday that an 80-year-old woman died over the weekend as she tried to evacuate her Meadow Valley home, west of Summerland.

Riley Gettens, director of electoral area F that includes Meadow Valley and Faulder, told residents they were “living through a nightmare.”

Faulder, a community of about 215 residents, was overwhelmed by the fire and has largely been incinerated.

Gettens said at the briefing that residents were grieving, “in a way that can only be understood by your tight-knit communities, built on a deep love for your land and neighbours and way of life that you so cherish.”

Adding to their burden was the knowledge that they had lost one of their own.

About 10,000 homes remain under evacuation order in Summerland, Peachland in the regional districts of Okanagan-Similkameen and Central Okanagan, and on Penticton Indian Band lands. More than 3,200 homes are subject to lower-level evacuation alerts that stretch north past Peachland to Highway 97C, and south past Penticton along the city’s western outskirts.

The B.C. government said in a statement Monday that it had booked more than 1,000 hotel rooms in Penticton, Kelowna and West Kelowna to accommodate evacuees, with plans to set up more than 1,000 beds for group lodging.

Okanagan-Similkameen emergency operations centre director Graham Statt said damage assessments had not occurred because the fire zone was unsafe.

Although planning for re-entry was underway, he told the briefing that the road to recovery would be “a long one” for some.

The Bald Range fire spanned about 156 square kilometres on Monday, and wildfire service incident commander Hugh Murdoch said its rapid spread reflected the tinder-dry conditions.

“It’s a true fire fight for the crews,” he said, citing the steep, hot conditions.

The B.C. government issued a ban Monday for off-road vehicles on Crown land in the Kamloops and Southeast fire centres, as well as parts of the Cariboo and Coastal centres, the areas where most of the fires are burning.

While the B.C. government has not costed out the wildfire fight or what comes next, Parmar said it would spend what it needs to respond to wildfires and keep people safe.

But what comes next remains unclear, even as the federal government pledges help for evacuees amid a provincial state of emergency.

Brian Callow wanted to stay at his property outside Summerland to protect his home and mushroom farm from the oncoming inferno late Friday. But with embers flying, it became unsafe, and he needed to get his dog out (his wife and two young children had already fled).

Callow’s home was spared, but the fire destroyed “every single building” on the farm itself, he said in an interview Monday.

“My business partner Thor Clausen, he lost his home, lost his shop,” said Callow, who has been building the business, What The Fungus, for 12 years.

While the losses hadn’t fully sunk in, Callow said the task of rebuilding his farm and others destroyed by the fire would be too much for the local community alone, and they would need help from higher levels of government.

Defence Minister David McGuinty said the Canadian Armed Forces were on standby to help manage the wildfire situation.

He said the B.C. government sent a request to Emergency Management Minister Eleanor Olszewski and she approved federal help with shelter and accommodation.

While B.C. had not formally asked for military assistance in the wildfire emergency, McGuinty said Monday that the military was in “direct, constant contact” with federal and provincial officials.

The military, he said, was ready the moment it received a formal request to act, adding the situation was being assessed “hour by hour.”

Callow said he wanted to rebuild.

“But there’s nothing left and I don’t know how we’re going to do it yet,” he said, noting that clearing rubble would be the first step.

He said he’d been looking into funding through Ottawa’s agricultural recovery program.

“If they can assist farms to get back to functioning, we need it.”

Prime Minister Mark Carney issued his condolences about the death of the woman in Meadow Valley, saying on social media Monday that the news was “heartbreaking.”

The fire fight continues on other fronts, too.

RCMP in Salmon Arm, about 160 kilometres north of Summerland, said Monday they had arrested a suspect alleged to have deliberately set a fire on Saturday along the Trans-Canada Highway.

Bushes and trees were on fire and a business was threatened, but police said that officers and bystanders helped put out the flames.

Police said they realized the fire was deliberately set and arrested a suspect the next day. No charges have currently been laid.

In the Cariboo, there was progress on the massive Pear Lake fire, about 10 times the size of the Summerland fire at 1,468 square kilometres, while the Thompson-Nicola Regional District downgraded evacuation orders.

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

— With files from Brieanna Charlebois and Chuck Chiang in Vancouver and Wolfgang Depner in Victoria

Brenna Owen, The Canadian Press