Evacuation order: Residents of 125 properties must leave due to Flat Lake wildfire, B.C. district says

Smoke visible from a planned burn of the Flat Lake wildfire on July 29, 2021. (BC Wildfire Service/Twitter)

Vancouver -

More than 100 additional B.C. properties have been placed under an evacuation order because of a massive wildfire.

The Thompson-Nicola Regional District issued a notice Friday morning saying residents at 125 properties must leave immediately because of their proximity to the Flat Lake wildfire.

The address are all in Electoral Area E or the Bonaparte Plateau and include:

• 2340 to 4415 Big Bar Rd.;
• 2760 and 2769 Dog Creek Rd.;
• 1876 to 1948 Lake Dr.;
• 2920 Little Big Bar Rd.;
• 1792 to 2264 Marriot Rd.;
• 3380 to 3600 Meadow Lake Rd.;
• 3629 to 3645 Sharptail Rd.

A full map of the area is available online. 

The Flat Lake fire, which is in the Cariboo Fire Centre and about 27 kilometres southwest of 100 Mile House, was last measured earlier this week at 39,584 hectares in size. Officials say the blaze was started by lightning.

As of Thursday, there were 76 firefighters and 39 pieces of heavy equipment dedicated to the blaze.

The latest evacuation orders have been added to 60 others that cover 3,058 properties. Another 18,691 are under evacuation alert, according to data posted by Emergency Info BC Thursday night.

As of Friday morning, there were 241 wildfires active in the province. Of those, 170 were believed to be caused by lightning and 13 were believed to be human-caused. The remaining 58 are still unknown.

So far this fiscal year, 1,257 wildfires have been recorded in the province, BC Wildfire Services says.