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"The spot fires have all connected, it is raging down the mountainside. This is... oh my god. I don't have any words for this."
A resident watches as a raging wildfire threatens to engulf the city of West Kelowna in British Columbia, where a state of emergency has been declared.
Canada's worst-on-record wildfire season continues to rage, as thousands of residents have rushed to evacuate their homes.
The 20,000 residents of Yellowknife have also been urged to evacuate, as multiple wildfires edge closer to the capital of Canada's northern territories.
As an official deadline to evacuate lapses, traffic on the city's one highway was congested as residents drove hundreds of kilometres to safety or waited in long lines for emergency flights.
Evacuating Yellowknife resident Paul Falvo says that with limited options to leave as the fire approached, he and his family were lucky to board a commercial flight.
"It's kind of surreal up there right now. We’ve got a lot of smoke in the air, that’s not new, but the droning engines of the waterbombers flying overhead. There was the question of how does everybody get out? We don’t have a car, so for us we thought we’d be taking an evacuation flight, then there ended up being seats opened up on a commercial flight, so we just took that."
A state of emergency was declared early on Friday in and around Kelowna, a city some 300 kilometres east of Vancouver, with a population of about 150,000.
Spot fires sparked on the east side of Lake Okanagan, just kilometres from the city.
Officials said the next 24 to 48 hours could be the most difficult to manage.
British Columbia's Director of Wildfire Operations, Cliff Chapman:
"This weather event has the potential to be the most challenging 24 to 48 hours of the summer from a fire perspective. We are expecting significant growth and we are expecting our resources to be challenged from north to south in the province over the next 48 hours."
The situation hasn't been helped by a news ban on Meta's Facebook and Instagram platforms.
Earlier this month, Meta blocked news content in response to a law passed by Canada's parliament requiring companies like Google and Meta to negotiate deals with news publishers for content.
In a statement, Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge demanded Meta lift its ban, saying it is completely unacceptable.
"Meta's reckless choice to block news is hurting access to vital information on Facebook and Instagram. We are calling on them to reinstate news sharing today for the safety of Canadians facing this emergency. We need more news right now, not less."
In response, a Meta spokesperson says the company has activated the 'Safety Check' feature on Facebook that allows users to communicate that they are safe in the wake of a natural disaster or a crisis.
Canada has seen a record number of wildfires this year, with more than 5,700 fires burning more than 137,000 square kilometres, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre.
Experts say climate change has exacerbated the wildfire problem, as drought and high temperatures contribute to the number and intensity of this year's fires.
World Meteorological Organisation spokeswoman Clare Nullis explains.
"Canada's record-breaking wild season unfortunately continues, it's completely off the charts this year. As of the 17th of August, more than 600 wildfires were out of control and you've all seen on the headlines, this includes, you know, at the high north of Canada near the Arctic Circle where there's a mass evacuation order in Yellowknife.
"Further down South British Columbia fires are raging there we've seen very, very high temperatures this week including a temperature of 42.2 degrees Celsius in the town of Lytton, which was a new August temperature record. You don't normally, and you shouldn't normally, associate 42.2 degrees Celsius with Canada but this is what we are seeing."
About 22,000 people, or roughly half the population in Canada's Northwest Territories, are now displaced as the fires rage on.
