PENTICTON — The wildfire raging near Okanagan Lake in British Columbia’s southern Interior claimed the life of an 80-year-old woman as she tried to escape the flames, police said on Sunday, as video footage and grim accounts emerged of nearby devastation.

A statement from Penticton RCMP said the resident of Meadow Valley, northwest of Summerland, B.C., had been trying to flee with a family member “when she died suddenly,” believed to be a result of the fire.

Police said the death, reported early Saturday by a witness who was also evacuating, was the only known fatality in the blaze that has forced about 20,000 people out of their homes and left the community of Faulder a smouldering ruin.

The BC Coroners Service was investigating the nature of the woman’s death, and police were not aware of any other fatalities in the fire, calling it “a deeply traumatic event,” the statement said.

Official accounts of the Bald Range wildfire’s destruction have been scant since it erupted on Friday and raced towards the communities of Summerland and Peachland on the western shores of Okanagan Lake.

But the extent of the losses in Faulder, population 215, are clear in a video provided to The Canadian Press.

The footage is near silent, but for the occasional gasp and whispered expletive, as the driver passes slowly through the wreckage of the community.

Dozens of structures are reduced to their foundations, in a landscape of burnt-out cars and scorched trees.

Faulder was one of the first areas overrun by the explosive fire as it surged east. Little is now left of the community along Fish Lake Road, about 10 kilometres from Summerland.

Will Roelfsema supplied the video, saying it was taken by relatives still in the area; he declined an interview Sunday, saying in a statement that he and his family were exhausted.

“We’ve had to evacuate twice now in the last two days and haven’t gotten much sleep, especially since some of our family is still out there at Darke Lake,” he said of an area that is under evacuation order because of the fire.

Officials said there had been “significant structure loss” and declared a provincial state of emergency on Saturday.

Dayna Joynt said she was in Faulder on Friday. She was bringing a Pokemon cake she had made to celebrate her granddaughter’s sixth birthday party with Joynt’s boyfriend and their families when the fire bore down.

She described chaotic scenes that followed, as her partner and his brother chose to stay and fight the fire despite an evacuation order.

Joynt said she was pepper sprayed and handcuffed by police who told her she was “holding things up,” before she eventually drove out, surrounded by fire.

“I got all of the kids and their vehicles out the best I could. And then by the time I left, I was engulfed in flames. My whole van is scorched — I melted a tire, I hit a truck going out. There was not a soul around,” she said.

Joynt said her daughter and two grandchildren were extracted by helicopter, while she credited her boyfriend and his brother with using hoses to save their home and about four more in Faulder.

“They managed to save our house that we live in, but lost his brother’s and sister-in-law’s and his mom’s,” she said in an interview on Sunday.

Kyla Gaudiuso is a baker in Summerland, but lives in Faulder. She said she discovered her home had been destroyed when a firefighter sent her a photo of the ridge where it was located.

“All you can see is fire on that ridge. There is no way that anything survives that,” she said.

Erin Carlson, an evacuee from Summerland, said her family plans to rebuild the structures they lost from their business, Carcajou Fruit Company Ltd.

The business employs workers from Mexico, many of whom had to be rescued by helicopter as the flames advanced, Carlson said.

“It was more than 30 people. I don’t know the exact number,” she said in an interview outside the evacuation centre in Penticton on Sunday.

Doug Holmes, mayor of the District of Summerland, said initially he wasn’t “too concerned” about the fire that sparked about 15 kilometres outside his community.

But within two hours, that had changed.

“It had spread so quickly, it had reached Summerland already, and that’s when people were starting to panic a little bit,” Holmes said in an interview on Sunday outside the evacuation centre.

Some slept on air mattresses with their pets inside, while others set up their trailers and camper vans in the parking lot.

Holmes said it looked like the fire was burning along the whole western edge of his community on the shores of Okanagan Lake.

“You could just see flames, no matter where you looked on the horizon … it was just flames coming down coming towards you.”

An emergency centre was initially established in Summerland, but by midnight, the decision was made to evacuate the whole town.

“It was quite a thing seeing 12,000 people all leaving at the same time, packing up their homes and neighbours helping neighbours, helping the elderly,” Holmes said.

About 10,000 homes are under evacuation order in Summerland, Peachland, the regional districts of Okanagan-Similkameen and Central Okanagan, and on Penticton Indian Band lands.

More than 3,200 homes are subject to lower-level evacuation alerts that stretch north past Peachland to Highway 97C, and south past Penticton along the city’s western outskirts.

Holmes said it was too soon to take account of the toll in Summerland, an active fire zone, but homes had been lost.

He encouraged community members to support each other, saying “the best in people” comes out in times of crisis and that was evident during the evacuation.

Carlson said she expects the devastation caused by the fire will be traumatic for residents.

“It was really hard to watch, and I don’t know how we process trauma like that, but hopefully as a community we can work on it.”

The home Carlson grew up in survived the inferno, as did her current home closer to Summerland, she said, adding the fire came “very close.”

The BC Wildfire Service’s map showing the perimeter of the fire suggested it tore through homes in northwest parts of Summerland before reaching the lake.

Penticton remained covered in a thick blanket of smoke Sunday, with the service saying poor visibility was hampering aerial operations.

Greg Krauter, who was outside the evacuation centre in Penticton surrounded by six of his seven goats, said he watched the fire much of Friday night from his property on the crest of a hill in Summerland and knew it was time to leave when the power went out.

He remained in Summerland until later Saturday and felt confident his own home was untouched by the blaze.

But his survey of the area revealed burning tree stumps and a fiery geyser of natural gas at one home, Krauter said.

The Interior Wildlife Rehabilitation Society, meanwhile, said the fire swept through its facility in Summerland so fast, “there was no time to pack anything besides the animals and ourselves.”

A post on the society’s Facebook page said security cameras showed the facility engulfed in flames before the power went out and everything went black.

The Bald Range blaze is one of four wildfires of note in the province, all of them threatening homes or communities.

The massive Pear Lake blaze has destroyed structures on about 120 properties in the Clinton area, part of the province’s south Cariboo region.

The Bradley Creek fire that raced through the Okanagan Indian Band reserve on Aug. 1, destroying more than 200 homes, has been classified as being held to its current perimeter.

The wildfire service said Sunday that it was expecting “high potential” for blazes caused by lightning strikes, particularly in the central Interior and Okanagan regions.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 9, 2026.

— With files by Brieanna Charlebois in Vancouver