Thanks Candace for PMing me, I wouldn't have seen this thread otherwise.

We live in Glenrosa in West Kelowna (so does Jynnelle, Tikeyas_mom), so we were evacuated (along with 15,000 others) a couple weeks back when the huge Glenrosa fire was blazing. I'm not sure how many houses were lost, but we made out okay. We stayed at my FIL's place and actually had a good weekend -- 6 people and 6 dogs all packed into one house, it was crazy, but we barbequed every night and the government was generous enough to help everyone out to buy groceries and clothes and such. I wasn't even home when the evacuation occured but had the puppies with me, and Kyle was home. He ended up staying at the house until midnight or so because he was afraid of looters (there were lots of them!) and finally left with Visa and our other valuables because they wouldn't let me back in and he didn't want me to stay in town alone. He hiked back to the house through the canyon a couple of times just to check on it and make sure everything was okay. Two of our neighbors ended up staying behind as well and they kept an eye on our house -- in fact we found evidence of their drunkiness on our patio and in the yard LOL.
Apparently we had a group of 9 looters in the neighborhood but my neighbor pulled a gun on them and he and my other neighbor ended up beating two of them senseless while the others ran back through the canyon. Alot of people lost alot of valuables in Glenrosa -- the police wouldn't let you back in for anything, it was ridiculous. A friend of mine was in his car behind a man trying to get through the barricade -- his kids were at home, he needed to go get them, and the police wouldn't let him through. He finally smashed his truck into the police cars. So many people had to leave pets behind -- alot of pets went without owners for several days in the house. Our friends were rear-ended by a lady who was suffering some sort of stress/panic thing -- she just kept her foot on the gas, pushed their truck out of the way, and ended up crashing her car -- when they went to get her out she was very disoriented and confused, didn't know what was happening.
Hotels were booked in every city to almost three hours away. Alot of people had to stay in shelters. The SPCA was filled to the max, foster homes had to take pets. Horses were (and still are) a big issue, more people need to be willing to foster them.

The valley has just been a mess in the last month. A new fire starts here almost every day. We saw lightening strike across the lake last week and it burned atleast a few acres befroe it was put out. Yesterday another small forest fire started about five minutes from here.
Right now it's the Terrace Mountain fire we're all worried about. It's over 7,000 hectares. The wind is pushing it south, this way. It's 0% contained still. Very steep terrain, hard for firefighters to get at. They brought in more firefighting crews from Ontario and Quebec because the BC crews are worn right out. We've already had 2200 fires this year -- the last record was 2003, when we had 859 fires. Quite a difference!!! And everybody remembers just how bad the Kelowna fire was that year, hundreds of homes were lost.
The budget is running tight too -- the government didn't realise how bad the fires would be this year and we've gone more than double over the budget. You know it costs $14,000 a day to run the big tanker helicoptors, not including fuel.
I've breathed in way more smoke in the last few weeks than I should have, my lungs aren't liking it and I know it's not good for the baby.

I imagine it will be some time before the Terrace Mountain fire is under control. Lillooet too -- very steep terrain, 0% contained. It's just a bad hot dry year, and too many dry thunderstorms.