Update: Crews attend lightning-caused fires

Update

Tuesday night’s lightning storm sparked many of the 17 new fires in the Kamloops Fire Centre which have had crews scrambling today.

One of them was in the North Okanagann near Hullcar Road in Spallumcheen which is now believed to be out.

All the fires are small with the largest at 3 hectares northwest of Keremeos.

There is also one near the Batta Forest Service Road northeast of Kelowna.

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Original story

Tuesday night’s thunderstorm has sparked several new wildfires in the Kamloops Fire Centre.

One is near Hullcar Road in Spallumcheen, which the B.C. Wildfire Service said is spot-sized (0.01 of hectare), but may be noticeable.

“I think it’s been fairly visible to people, and it might be visible to people travelling on the highway in that area,” Taylor MacDonald, fire information officer, told Vernon Matters.

The blaze has four provincial firefighters on scene today, and at last report, it was not contained.

It is one of nine new fires in the Kamloops Fire Centre, most of them in the southern part of the zone, with the largest about two hectares northwest of Keremeos.

The storm knocked out power for over 50,000 B.C. Hydro customers Tuesday night in the Thompson/Shuswap area, but no major outages were reported in the North Okanagan.