State of emergency declared in Canada as 20,000 flee wildfires

British Columbia was under a province-wide state of emergency as firefighters waged an epic battle.

A wildfire burns on the mountainside above a lakefront home in West Kelowna (Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press/AP)

Firefighters battling wildfires in British Columbia on Saturday tried to stop flames that swept through West Kelowna suburbs and forced the evacuation of the University of British Columbia campus in Kelowna.

The capital of Canada’s Northwest Territories, meanwhile, was transformed into a virtual ghost town, after nearly all the residents of the city of just over 20,000 fled another wildfire, among hundreds of fires in western Canada.