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A fire makes its way to the small town of Lytton
Photo: JENNIFER GAUTHIER / REUTERS
Lytton doesn't exist anymore.
After several days with record temperatures of up to 49.6 degrees Celsius, a fire broke out in the town in the Canadian province of British Columbia.
It spread at a rapid rate and destroyed one house after another in a matter of hours.
More than 1000 people had to leave the region in a very short time, as the Canadian broadcaster CBC reports.
In a video, walls of fire and thick clouds of smoke can be seen in the place.
Many residents fear for their relatives.
"90 percent of the village was burned, including the town center," said MP Brad Vis on Thursday.
The 250 residents of the village, which is 250 kilometers northeast of Vancouver, were brought to safety from the flames on Wednesday evening.
On Tuesday, the thermometers in Lytton showed 49.6 degrees Celsius.
"Our poor little town Lytton is gone," posted Edith Loring-Kuhanga, a resident of Lyttons, on Facebook.
"It's devastating - we're all in shock!" The people had neither electricity nor internet, everyone tried to reach others.
The members of the church have lost everything.
Several forest fires have broken out in both Canada and the United States because of the heat.
In the Canadian province of British Columbia alone, 62 new fires were discovered within 24 hours, as provincial government leader John Horgan said.
Almost everywhere in British Columbia there is the very highest risk of forest fires.
Several fires also blazed north of the town of Kamloops, which is about 150 kilometers northeast of Lytton.
The heat warning has now been extended to the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, parts of the Northwest Territories and northern Ontario.
The ongoing heat wave in western Canada has already resulted in hundreds of deaths, according to the authorities.
486 unexpected deaths had been reported in British Columbia Friday through Wednesday, the province's forensic medicine said.
This number is likely to increase.
It is 195 percent above the usual average for a comparable period.
The authority assumes that the sharp rise is related to the extreme heat.
A “heat dome” is responsible for the extreme temperatures, a phenomenon in which the high pressure in the atmosphere holds the hot air in the region.
According to weather experts at the Washington Post, the intensity of this heat dome is “statistically so rare that it can only be expected on average once every few thousand years”.
Man-made climate change "made these kinds of extraordinary events more likely."
kha / AFP