Amid the nearly 1,500 wildfires that British Columbia has seen so far this summer, one of the regions most affected has been the Kamloops Fire Centre region in B.C.’s southern Interior, which encompasses the Okanagan. Local residents shared their experiences of devastation and evacuation as around 270 of the fires remain actively burning. Cathy Wilde lives in a trailer park in a housing development on the reserve land of the Okanagan Indian Band northwest of Vernon, B.C. “The winds were shifting … so they didn’t know what was going to happen. So I had my car mostly packed for over a week, and kind of sitting on the edge,” Wilde said in an interview. “I packed up as many clothes as I could. And I packed air mattress bedding, a pillow, hiking boots, good and personal items that I wanted to keep in case the place burned down.” She checked …