{"id":792098,"date":"2026-07-10T04:59:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T04:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/792098\/"},"modified":"2026-07-10T04:59:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T04:59:10","slug":"bass-coast-festival-attendees-warned-to-stay-alert-as-interior-b-c-wildfires-impact-air-quality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/792098\/","title":{"rendered":"Bass Coast Festival attendees warned to stay alert as Interior B.C. wildfires impact air quality"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Organizers of the Bass Coast Music and Arts Festival are urging attendees to keep up to date with air quality alerts related to wildfires in the region.<\/p>\n

The edge of an evacuation alert zone for a fire at Ainslie Creek, about three hours’ drive northeast of Vancouver, is positioned less than 20 kilometres from the festival site near Merritt, B.C.<\/p>\n

The festival runs from Wednesday, July 8, to Monday, July 13, with the bulk of the 5,000 festival goers expected through the gates on Friday.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, Environment and Climate Change Canada issued a yellow-level warning for Merritt and the Nicola Valley due to smoke from the wildfires near Boston Bar. <\/p>\n

The fires burning in the area \u2014 known as the Brunswick complex, which includes the Ainslie Creek and Brunswick Creek fires \u2014 together covered nearly 200 square kilometres, or 20,000 hectares, as of Wednesday night. They’ve forced numerous evacuation orders and alerts.<\/p>\n

People in the area have been advised to consider postponing or reducing strenuous outdoor activities and spend time indoors where possible.<\/p>\n

According to the Air Quality Health Index (AQHI), the air quality further north in Kamloops is predicted to remain at five (moderate risk) until at least Saturday.<\/p>\n

\"Orange,Thick wildfire smoke from other parts of the province settled in Kamloops, B.C., on Tuesday afternoon (July 7, 2026), resulting in glowing orange skies. (Kayla Pepper)<\/p>\n

Speaking to CBC News from the festival site on Thursday, Bass Coast co-founder Andrea Graham said the set-up was proceeding as usual.<\/p>\n

“Our stages are about to open, and people are arriving and setting up camp and it’s feeling really good,” she said.<\/p>\n

“We’ve been fortunate with the winds. They blow the smoke out of the valley and then it comes [back] in, so it’s intermittent and it really changes by the hour.”<\/p>\n

\"TheThe Bass Coast Electronic Music and Art Festival takes place near the town of Merritt, about three hours’ drive northeast of Vancouver. (Ben Nelms\/CBC)<\/p>\n

Highway 1 near Boston Bar\u00a0is closed<\/a>\u00a0in both directions as a result of the two fires, and on Thursday evening traffic heading into the festival was heavy.<\/p>\n

“[The journey] can be susceptible to delays,” Graham said.<\/p>\n

“So we just suggest people take care, look ahead at the road conditions and and plan their time accordingly.”<\/p>\n

Merritt is gearing up for a warm weekend<\/a>, with mostly sunny conditions and daily highs ranging from 20 C to 28 C.<\/p>\n

“It’s a different experience having this smoke here, but we are going to make the best of our time,” Graham said.<\/p>\n

“We’re very fortunate to be able to gather like this.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 3 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":792099,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[49,48,44],"class_list":["post-792098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=792098"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792098\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/792099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=792098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=792098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=792098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}