B.C.'s latest wildfire evacuation is affecting residents and fishing lodges along a section of the Dean River, a remote, world-renowned fishing destination 45 kilometres north of Bella Coola on the province's Central Coast.
An evacuation order was issued at 6 p.m. Monday evening for the Dean River from Kalone Creek east to the Takla River.
Properties west of the evacuation zone, along the Dean from Kalone Creek west to Berhhardt Creek have been warned to be ready to leave at a moment's notice.
Evacuees are being told to register in Bella Coola, but that town is also cut off by a wildfire that severed Highway 20 on Sunday through Tweedsmuir Park, about 500 kilometres north of Vancouver.
Bella Coola is no stranger to isolation by forest fires -- several wildfires last summer east of the community affected travel along Highway 20, the only road linking the town's 2,000 residents to the rest of the province.
The B.C. Forest Service says 277 wildfires are currently burning in B.C. with several of those blazes in the Cariboo Fire Centre keeping residents out of their homes.
