Major losses are expected to be confirmed as the growing threat of wildfires impacts the region, with warnings of more trouble ahead this week.

The full extent of the losses in the Bradley Creek wildfire in the North Okanagan are now becoming more clear.

As part of an update on Tuesday morning, Chief Dan Wilson suggests the losses are significant, including around 230 homes on his Okanagan Indian Band reserve #1.

Of those, around 30 are homes owned by Band members, while the other roughly 200 belong to non-Band members.

That blaze, which rapidly expanded on Saturday after first being discovered the day before, would roll north through Okanagan Indian Band territory, prompting a mass evacuation and alert put out through the BC Public Alert system on Saturday evening.

While whose homes were lost and whose survived isn’t likely to be made clear until initial assessment teams are allowed into the area, Wilson suggests people with people in the property in the fire zone need to be patient.

“We know people are looking for answers,” said Wilson as part of the update on Tuesday.  “Our priority has been and continues to be protecting lives and supporting the people affected by this wildfire.”

It is now listed at roughly 2,900 hectares in size.

The aggressive fire also caused extensive damage to local infrastructure, leaving thousands without power.

“Early findings confirm significant damage to the electrical system,” said BC Hydro in an update on the BC Day holiday Monday.

“To date, BC Hydro has identified approximately 150 power poles that will require replacement, with that number expected to increase as crews gain access to more areas and continue assessments,” added the utility.

BC Hydro warns that customers should be prepared for prolonged outages as crews focus on making the damaged infrastructure safe and creating access for the BC Wildfire Service.

It is a lack of power to run municipal water and sewar services which continues to keep folks in the Village of Clinton in the south Cariboo out of their homes.

Meanwhile, a secondary fire on Sunday in the Tappen area north of Salmon Arm in the Shuswap also raised some significant concerns.

A home would go up in flames along Vella Road, which runs adjacent to the TransCanada through the stretch between Tappen and Balmoral.

Crews were able to keep the fire from spreading to the nearby wooded area, which could have set off a much more intense fire for fire crews in the Shuswap to cope with.

The Fire Danger rating is sitting in the ‘High’ range through the whole of  Kamloops and the surrounding area, despite little precipitation in the region.

However, there are pockets of ‘Extreme’ fire danger in the region as well.

The BC Wildfire Service is warning of more potential challenges to come when it comes to that fire danger.

“Conditions are expected to return to hot, dry and windy, increasing the potential for fire activity,” said the Wildfire Service following a weekend of cooler-than-normal conditions for many parts of southern BC through the overnight hours.

“With the change in weather we may begin to see holdover fires, lightning-caused fires where heat smolders undetected until hotter, drier and windier conditions lead to more visible smoke,” added the Wildfire Service.

This is expected to include another round of dry lightening which is expected to hit the province starting late Thursday afternoon or early evening.

It comes as temperatures in the mid-30’s into the forthcoming weekend are expected to push the Fire Danger in the Kamloops, Cariboo and Southeast Fire Districts into the Extreme range for large parts of those areas.

TNRD adds more than subtracts from evacuees list

The wildfire fight across the Thompson-Nicola Regional District saw a mix of progress and setbacks over the long weekend, with some evacuees returning home while new threats also developed to the north of the sprawling District.

Thompson-Nicola Regional District

The downgrade affects just 2 properties in the TNRD, while people living on 76 properties owned within the SLRD are now allowed to return.

A similar reprieve was granted to property owners west of Merritt, where the TNRD pulled back an evacuation order for the Ainslie Creek wildfire.

The downgrade to an alert allows residents of more than 700 properties in the Lower Nicola and Sunshine Valley area to return home.

Near Logan Lake, the TNRD has officially cleared another potential threat over the weekend, lifting evacuation alerts for seven properties in the Tunkwa Lake Road area.

The area was threatened by a wildfire that sparked mid-week southwest of the community, prompting both the TNRD and the District of Logan Lake to issue evacuation alerts due to the fire’s rapid growth and proximity to the town.

The BC Wildfire Service, which would officially back up the Logan Lake Fire Department — which was the lead on the fire as it started within Logan Lake’s municipal boundary — moved the Guichon Creek fire into a ‘Being Held’ status on Sunday, with the fire not expected to get beyond its current scope, which was just over 145 hectares in size.

One unforeseen challenge for officials in Logan Lake was the apparent loss of the Municipality’s Internet service for a time during the fire, according to an online post from the Mayor, Robin Smith.

The District’s website, as of Sunday afternoon, was accessible, though its not clear if it’s running at full capacity at this point, though the elimination of the fire threat does ease that concern considerably.

While Logan Lake was given the all-clear on Sunday, the rest of those on the fire-lines in or near the rest of the TNRD aren’t as fortunate.

French Bar Creek evac order expands in ‘northwest’ TNRD 

Half an hour before Logan Lake was given unofficial permission to have a good night’s rest on Sunday, a separate group of folks up the Fraser Canyon in the south Cariboo weren’t as fortunate.

The Thompson Nicola Regional District would expand its Evacuation Orders for an additional 10 properties in an area to the northwest of Lillooet under threat from the so-called French Creek wildfire.

That fire was one of the original July fires the BC Wildfire Service was dealing with in the south Cariboo, even before the “dry lightening” event.

These were a collection of storms which rose up as ash-fueled systems from massive fires burning in southern Washington State and northern Oregon at the time — the same time US President Donald Trump was issuing his latest threat of tariffs on Canada because of wildfire smoke from northern Ontario wildfires wafting into the US northeast.

While the storm system which crossed from the US into BC wasn’t responsible for touching off the French Bar Creek fire itself, it was a major factor in its massive expansion at the time, with the fire now growing to over 370 sq./km in size.

That US-generated storm system did spawn the lightening which set off the Pear Lake wildfire, which is a unified combination of two other fires which continue to expand and threaten homes in 70 Mile House and are keeping folks in the Village of Clinton from getting back home.

The French Bar Creek fire is one of several fires which are continuing to threaten homes in the TNRD.

The neighboring Pear Lake fire — divided by the Fraser River from French Bar Creek — is now listed at over 155,000 hectares, or roughly 1,552 sq./km in size.

That’s almost double the size of the City of Calgary-proper.

That fire has forced folks living on nearly 1,500 properties out of the region, with the vast majority being sent north to the comparative safety of Prince George, as fires continue to threaten communities further north in the Cariboo region as well.

Earlier evacuees from the Village of Clinton and the surrounding area would end up coming south to Kamloops as part of the evacuation process at that time, with the City of Kamloops helping process at least 460 people this past week through the Emergency Social Services centre at McArthur Island.