Farnworth said the people had gone to several communities to the north, south and east and that all evacuees were being traced. These communities include Lillooet, Ashcroft, Spences Bridge, 100 Mile House, Kamloops, Chilliwack, Kelowna and Merritt.

There are no reports of fatalities at the moment and the RCMP and Red Cross were working to ensure everyone is accounted for.

All evacuees are asled to register online at ess.gov.bc.ca, or call the Emergency Operations Centre phone at 250-377-7188 or 1-866-377-7188 or email emergency@tnrd.ca.

Farnworth said most buildings were destroyed, including the RCMP and ambulance detachments.

Mayor Jan Polderman ordered all residents to evacuate immediately due to a “fire event” within the village at around 6 p.m. on Wednesday. This came a day after the village posted a Canadian record 49.6ºC as a heat wave gripped the province.

The order stated “because of the potential danger to life and safety, the Village of Lytton has issued an evacuation order for all properties” in the downtown and surrounding areas.

The B.C. Wildfire Service says the Lytton fire is roughly 80 square kilometres in size and classified as “out of control.”

Video from Wednesday’s evacuation  shows people fleeing in vehicles as dense smoke blankets the main road and wild winds shake the trees. There were several buildings on fire — including residences and businesses — as well as vehicles, including RVs.

Hotel rooms around the area were already booked by people seeking relief from the heat wave and by those getting away for Canada Day as most COVID-19 restrictions in the province were lifted, as well as by crews working on a pipeline project, Hildebrand said.

Loved ones can’t connect with each other

Rosanna Stamberg is looking for her son and daughter, Alfred and Marjorie Nelson, who live about eight kilometres from the centre of town in Lytton.

“I don’t know which direction they went. I don’t know if they went down towards Chilliwack. I don’t know if they went to Lillooet. I don’t know if they went to Spencer’s Bridge or Merritt or Kamloops. I have no idea,” she said in an interview from her home in Enderby. “Or if they stayed home.”

A spokeswoman for BC Hydro, which services about 600 customers in the area, said the Crown corporation doesn’t yet know how its equipment was affected.

“We know obviously there is damage but I have no idea what the extent to it is and we won’t know until we’ve got the OK from fire crews to go in, and that might take a few days,” Mora Scott said.

“We don’t understand exactly where everybody went.”

John Haugen, a deputy chief with the Lytton First Nation, says there has been a lot of “devastation and loss.”

He says the nation, which has evacuated people to a recreational centre in Lillooet, is still trying to account for all of its members.

He says part of the issue is a lack of cell service in the community, as well as people being forced to leave with little time to prepare.

Hildebrand said a reception centre has been set up in Kamloops but some people may have gone to Boston Bar or Merritt.

“That direction was the safest, I think. That’s part of our struggle now, is that we don’t have people registered and we don’t understand exactly where everybody went.”

An emergency reception centre has been established in Merritt, which is about 100 kilometres southeast of Lytton, and around 50 evacuees had registered there by Thursday morning. The city says it can also accomodate livestock from Lytton.

B.C. Wildfires Map 2021: Updates on fire locations, evacuation alerts/orders

B.C. Wildfires 2021: Evacuation orders, alerts issued for B.C. communities because of spreading fires

B.C. heat wave: Wildfire risk pushed to dangerously high levels

Lytton smashed the national heat record on Tuesday, recording 49.6ºC as a wildfire burned near.

Jo-Anne Beharrell and Marshall Potts were ordered from their home on Tuesday, a day before the latest evacuation alert.

They first spotted a wildfire around 5 p.m. on Monday from their kitchen window when it was about 1.5 kilometres from their front yard.

“It looked like, you know, a small brush fire, but we knew there was a problem,” Potts said in an interview Wednesday evening from Pinantan Lake, just outside Kamloops, where the couple are staying with family.

“The smoke is in various colours. … It definitely feels dystopian, that’s for sure. It definitely feels apocalyptic.”

Highway 1 is closed between Boston Bar and Spences Bridge, and Highway 12 has been shutdown to southbound traffic between Lillooet and Lytton.

“We are all in shock”

Edith Loring-Kuhanga, an administrator at the Stein Valley Nlakapamux School, says she and fellow staff members were forced to end a Zoom interview with a prospective teacher as the fire burned down their block.

The Lillooet First Nation established a muster station at the school, only to be told to leave for Lillooet once it was set up, she added.

“This is so devastating – we are all in shock,” Loring-Kuhanga wrote in a Facebook post. “Our community members have lost everything. I understand our Band office is also gone.”

Jean McKay said she smelled smoke at her home in the First Nations community of Kanaka Bar, home to about 100 people and approximately 15 kilometres from Lytton.

McKay said her 22-year-old daughter, Deirdre McKay, started to panic as the smell of smoke grew stronger.

The first major wildfire of the season was reported two weeks ago seven kilometres south of Lytton alongside Highway 1 at George Road, and while managed over the course of several days using helicopters and ground crews it re-erupted and is now classified as out of control.

Dozens of wildfires have erupted over the past four days in British Columbia amid the most extreme heat wave ever experienced in Canada and intense heat rising from the surface created a towering pyrocumulus, a mushroom-shaped cloud that can generate dry lightning, over the Lytton area.

U.S.-based meteorologist Chris Vagasky tweeted that more than 3,800 lightning events were detected.

“Just truly extreme fire behavior in British Columbia today,” Vagasky said

The B.C. Wildfire Service says of the 82 active fires in the province, 58 have ignited within the last two days. Lightning is the suspected cause of more than 52 per cent of the active fires, while humans are believed to have started a further 13 per cent.

Horgan said 62 new fires had been reported over the past 24 hours and that there had been 29,000 lighting strikes in that time.

The suspected cause of the remaining 34 per cent of active wildfires is unknown.

The fire risk across most of the province is rated at high to extreme.

More to come ….

— with files from Canadian Press, Reuters and the Washington Post