CANADA: A wildfire has forced up to 10,000 people from their homes in Kelowna, British Columbia, and 3,000 more may have to leave in what has become one of western Canada's worst fire seasons in decades.
Emergency officials in Canada's most western province said yesterday it was their "worst-case scenario" when a 17,000-hectare fire south of the city jumped a containment line and pushed into a neighbourhood of expensive and often newly built homes on Thursday night.
By yesterday morning a thick pall of smoke hung over the prosperous, vacation city of 96,000, shrouding the mountains where the fire still raged.
No deaths or injuries were reported, but local news reports said that more than a dozen homes may have been damaged or destroyed by the flames.