A resident from British Columbia’s Cariboo region says there’s nothing left around her property on Six Mile Lake other than her burnt-out chimney stack and her neighbour’s propane tank. Carol Senzeni said she got the news by watching the neighbour’s video posted to Facebook, days after she escaped from the home on Friday. Senzeni, whose home is about 10 kilometres away from the village of Clinton, said she watched the flames as they neared her home, sending large plumes of smoke into the sky. “I just threw what I could into the back of the vehicle. I took my two cats, and we left the property as fast as we could,” said Senzeni. “It was just a very turbulent and very quick exit.” Senzeni, who has found refuge north at 108 Mile Ranch, said the experience was “very daunting” and “very scary.” She said her cats are homesick, and they’ve been “keeping me up at night crying.” Officials with the Village of Clinton have said they would be calling residents who lost buildings on their properties from the Pear Lake wildfire, which has grown to about 670 square kilometres. Senzeni said she is grateful for receiving some support from the community, but she isn’t alone as her neighbours have also lost everything. “The people who reside farther outside of Clinton, insurance companies are not willing to insure them because they are farther away from fire services that are also volunteer, and so it is a little bit of a predicament for very many people in terms of the devastation that they’re suffering,” said Senzeni. An update from BC Wildfire Service said a strong inversion will leave smoke settled over the fire, reducing visibility for aircraft. The service said it’s likely that fire behaviour will increase later Thursday once the inversion breaks. Fuels remain heavily impacted by drought throughout the area and are highly susceptible to increased fire behaviour. About 50 of 130 wildfires burning in B.C. are out of control, and the weather in the central Interior is expected to return to hot and dry conditions through the August long weekend. Senzeni said many people in her neighbourhood went through trauma when they were evacuated during the Elephant Hill wildfire in 2017, which threatened numerous communities across the Interior as it grew to more than 191 square kilometres. “This wave of wildfires that has come through Clinton and is moving northward and onward into other areas in the north, it’s rekindling old trauma, but also with new dangers,” she said. “People are very skilled and aware and educated from a previous trauma, previous times, and so people know how to prepare and how to evacuate. But it doesn’t mean that it’s any easier this time for anybody,” she added. This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 30, 2026.
