Temporary accommodations like hotels and campgrounds in Kelowna, Kamloops, Oliver, Penticton, Vernon, and the surrounding area are no longer available for booking.
Instead, all of the available space will be given to people who have been evacuated and to first responders fighting fires in the area.
BC Premier David Eby made the announcement at a provincial news conference this afternoon (Saturday).
This does not impact people currently staying in accommodations, but Eby is calling on vacationers and people taking these spaces to pack up early and go home.
“The goal is to free up accommodation,” Eby said. “When you check out early, you are freeing up a hotel room for someone that is fleeing a wildfire, [or] a firefighter that is battling forest fires in the area.”
It also does not impact people travelling to the area to stay in private residences, but Eby, Bowinn Ma, the Minister of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness, and Cliff Chapman, the BC Wildfire Service’s Director of Provincial Operations, all urged residents to stay away from the area unless it is absolutely necessary.
“We shouldn’t need an order,” Eby said. “Please stay out of these areas.”
According to Ma, as of 1:45 this afternoon 30,000 people in BC have been evacuated, and 36,000 more are on an evacuation alert and could be told to leave their homes at any time.
Fires are still showing “aggressive growth,” Chapman used the Adams Lake wildfire in the Shuswap area as an example – in just 12 hours it moved 20 kilometers, and now has the region largely evacuated.
Chapman showed a map of McDougall Lake, which has evacuated tens of thousands from West Kelowna and has jumped the lake into the City of Kelowna.
The red dots indicate where the fire has spread in the last 24 hours.
While an unknown number of homes have been lost in West Kelowna, Chapman said no new confirmed structure losses happened overnight yesterday.
Over 30,000 hectares have burned in BC in the last 24 hours, and around 70,000 have burned in the last 48.
The BC Wildfire Service is still forecasting high winds and conditions conducive to further fire growth.