  Here's a recap and update. Last night was an unbelievable night. Around 7:00 pm my mom called me to say that huge military helicopters were hauling buckets of water right in front and right over her house. She has a home on a hill with a beautiful lake view in a subdivision in the trees on the outskirts of Kelowna. At the time, the fire was several kilometres south of her area, and there was at least one subdivision between her and the outermost edge of the forest. There had been spot fires happening occasionally when burning embers were carried by the wind several km's away.
We heard many many fire trucks screaming their way up the hill to the area close to fire. The fire station is about a half km from our house and it's the only road in and out of the affected area. Around that same time, the family of a friend of Angie's called to find out in our offer to take them in still stood and of course we said yes. They didn't think it would be needed but were just checking in case the fire got worse. It had been so quiet all day we thought we were going to be ok since the wind hadn't picked up as expected.
After I hung up, I went back to my radio which was giving 24 hour coverage, and heard that the evac alert would be changed to an evac order. I immediately called my mom and the other family and let them know. Within minutes, tons of packed up cars began streaming down the hill blocking every possible access route in and out. Many cars of people who had been away from their home for the evening were trying to get back up in the affected area to get their stuff and were being denied access.
Home videos were shown on TV of the fire right behind the subdivision by my mom's house but the worst hit area was about 2-3 km further down the road where about 25 homes were eventually burned to the ground. Most of those were $500,000+ and some are uninsurable because they are out of the fire protection district. Mom and Rod were more or less ready to go and managed to get down the 5 minutes trip within about 20 minutes.
The other family arrived at our place about 2 hours later. They had done no packing up until that point because nobody really believed that they'd have to evacuate. The traffic was so heavy some people took 2 hours to travel a 10 minute ride. We stood out in the front driveway watching the fire light up the entire mountain to the south of us, eventually we got lawn chairs and sat there with the radio on just watching the flames (and drinking beer ;). We went in to bed at about 1 am but I couldn't sleep most of the night - I was listening to the radio and hearing people call in to tell what they were seeing. People who live across the lake could get an excellent view of the entire fire now that the smoke had cleared somewhat. With binoculars, they could see houses burning etc. There were also reports of burning embers landing in areas near us so at about 11 pm, they announced that everyone south of Mission Creek was on evac alert which meant us.
I didn't bother to pack anything up, but I did write a list of stuff to take and now this morning, I'm going to pack up the essentials and have them ready to go. I am heading in to the school right now and check out what the plan is. 80% of our student population has been evacuated from their homes and the school is in the evac alert area so I have no idea how we're gong to start up school just over a week from now.
Over 10,000 people in 3800 homes have been evacuated and 2000 more homes are on one hour alert. The forecast for this afternoon is for wind, lightening, and possible showers but they will probably amount to nothing as they usually do at this time of year. If I get evacuated, I'll try to post before I leave, but if I suddenly disappear, I'll have to post once I'm back in my house. Gotta go pack now. Bye. 
