‘The biggest fire season we’ve ever seen’: Fire-ravaged British Columbia braces for more after deadly Lytton blaze

A village was all but destroyed by fire, but that may just be the beginning, writes Ashleigh Stewart in Kamloops

Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officers man a roadblock on the Trans-Canada Highway as a wildfire burns in Lytton, British Columbia, Friday, July 2, 2021. Officials on Friday hunted for any missing residents of a British Columbia town destroyed by wildfire as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau offered federal assistance. (Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press via AP )

As firefighters across Canada’s British Columbia battle almost 200 blazes across the province, authorities are bracing for one of the most severe fire seasons in years.

Currently, 172 fires of varying sizes are burning across BC, with 60 situated in the Kamloops Fire Centre, where the town of Lytton was all but destroyed by a fire on Wednesday evening.

Thick smoke envelops huge swathes of the Thompson-Nicola Regional District, a mountainous region in BC’s interior, as wildfires rage out of control and threaten homes and communities nearby.