The Adams Lake ferry worked through the night Wednesday to move firefighters in and evacuees out as a wildfire raged on the east side of the lake.

The 25-square kilometre Lower East Adams Lake wildfire – now a wildfire of note – is burning near the southeast corner of Adams Lake. Hundreds of properties across the Columbia-Shuswap Regional District, the Thompson-Nicola Regional District, and the Adams Lake Indian Band have been ordered to evacuate.

“When I arrived on scene just before midnight, there was an immense amount of traffic and concerned people and trying to figure out what their next steps were and where they were going,” Marinus Goossen, a marine manager with WaterBridge Ferries, said

“There are a lot of unhappy people, but in any crisis situation there’s going to be unhappy people because people don’t like to be displaced, and I don’t blame them.”

Connie Berkley, who owns the Adams Lake Store across the lake from the evacuation area, described a scene of confusion as people sobbed over having to leave their homes and their pets, wondering where to park their cars and deal with their boats.

There is just one road in and out of the area, which includes the cable ferry that takes six minutes to cross the lake with a maximum of 10 vehicles and 48 passengers.

Residents were waiting to be taken to the other side of the lake Wednesday afternoon “when all hell broke loose,” Berkley said in an interview on Thursday.

With the fire flaring for a couple of weeks, Berkley said she and others have been left wondering why it wasn’t doused earlier.

“They should have been on it way before they were,” she said. “All I can say is it’s very sad for me as a business owner and as someone who lives in this beautiful country, and that to just let the trees burn makes no sense to me.”

Berkley said she should be going into her busiest time before a long weekend, but now only fire crews are ferried in to help with the fast-moving blaze threatening homes on the other side of the lake.

“I have two months to make my money, July and August, so I have a store full of stock for my biggest weekend,” she said. “The roads are closed, the campgrounds are closed, the lake is closed and what am I gonna do with all this stock?”

Forrest Tower with the BC Wildfire Service said the Lower East Adams Lake Fire had been moving away from structures until the “drastic wind shift” caught forecasters by surprise.

The fire was on a steep, inaccessible slope and the winds pushed it aggressively toward the community of Dorian Bay, where it’s now licking at people’s backyards, he said.

“Every indication was that the fire would be stable,” Tower said. “Unfortunately, like I said, there was a very large anomalous wind shift just kind of localized in that area.”

Tower said it was a stressful situation for crews and residents involved, and a “very intense and scary night for people that were evacuated.”