Emotions are high for residents in the southeast corner of Penticton, as people wait to hear whether an evacuation alert will become an order.
The alert was issued Tuesday night for nearly 3,700 homes, asking residents to prepare themselves to be ready to leave immediately if things changed for the worse at the Christie Mountain wildfire.
"When we saw the red sky and the smoke, it was a little bit scary at that time,” said Charlie Utz, one of the residents on alert. He has packed up clothes, important documents, a few toiletries and the necessities needed for his dog.
Brian Allanson, a Valley View resident, heard about the evacuation when he wasn’t home.
“We were dealt misinformation at first when we phoned in, so we thought we were evacuated,” Allanson said. “We were two hours out of town so we had friends come over and unload everything out of the house with our daughter and son.”
Allanson was able to store many of the family belongings with neighbours who live farther away, keeping the necessities and leaving the rest in the house if they have to leave.
“If we didn’t get it out, we would be fine with it," he said.
Another resident of the area shares the same sentiment. Marlene Trenholm has got the necessities ready to leave, but has kept what they’re taking to a minimum.
“Yes, there’s a lot of sentimental things in our house, but they can be replaced if need be. But as long as I can get my family, including my four-legged family, then we’ll be good.”
Trenholm has a few bags packed with important documents, passports, clothes and needlepoint pictures.
“I want to make sure I can save and protect [the needlepoint], because he’s not with us anymore to do some new ones," she said.
One resident says she's been impressed with the firefighting efforts near her home, after watching planes fly over constantly.
“I'm feeling very okay today, because these guys are working hard,” Yasmin John-Thorpe said. She has packed up her medicine, supplies and she's ready to go.
“If they tell us we’ve got to go, we’ve got to go.”
Structural protection "strike teams" with fire protection apparatus will be stationed throughout the residential area threatened by the Christie Mountain wildfire starting this morning.
The BC Wildfire Service says this is to perform assessments and proactively triage infrastructure in the area just south of Penticton.
"This action is a precautionary measure to mitigate risk to homes in the area ahead of an approaching weather system that may cause challenging fire behaviour," the wildfire service tweeted Thursday night.
As of Friday morning, the fire is still estimated to have burned an area of 2,000 hectares.
With files from Chelsea Powrie
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