 Dramatic eyewitness footage showed smoke-filled skies and an intense blaze in the hills and mountains above the Canadian city of West Kelowna on Thursday as wildfires continued to rage in British Columbia. Thousands of British Columbia residents were on high evacuation alert on August 19 after rapidly intensifying wildfires forced the western Canadian province to declare a state of emergency. The Pacific province has seen strong winds in dry lightning in the past 36 hours due to a cold mass of air interacting with hot air built up in the sultry summer. That intensified existing forest fires in the province and ignited new ones.