Canada’s wildfire crisis has shifted westward in August, with fast-moving blazes triggering evacuations and a provincial state of emergency in British Columbia just weeks after smoke from fires in Ontario choked cities to the south.

An explosive wildfire forced the evacuation of roughly 20,000 people from several Okanagan Lake communities on Saturday after a blaze was discovered around 5:30 p.m. Pacific time on Friday about 10 miles northwest of Summerland. It scorched nearly 12,400 acres in about four hours and continued spreading rapidly.

Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Sunday that federal officials had approved a request for assistance to support victims of the blaze, known as the Bald Range fire.

The fire is considered out of control, and by Sunday morning it had burned 25,000 acres.

An 80-year-old woman died when she was attempting to evacuate from her home in Meadow Valley, near Summerland, on Friday. “She died suddenly,” the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Penticton said in a statement.

The British Columbia premier, David Eby, said on Saturday that the fire was “like a bomb going off.” He called it “a remarkable escalation of fire activity.”