Lou Wilde's 17 years as a firefighter did not prepare him for the "firestorm" that ravaged Kelowna a decade ago this summer.

"You can find pictures on the Internet of huge walls of fire coming down the valley, but that's not what burned neighbourhoods down," said Kelowna's Deputy Chief, recalling how just a few embers from those walls were enough to engulf a home.

More than 2,400 wildfires ravaged B.C. in the summer of 2003. As many as 45,000 thousand people were forced to flee as flames licked at doorsteps, eventually burning through almost 250,000 hectares and leaving hundreds homeless. Three pilots died fighting the flames.

The season was the worst ever for forest fires in B.C., costing an estimated $700 million.

Despite everything they've learned in fighting fires, a record dry spell for this July has Wilde worried that more firestorms may be on the way.

"We've got the ideal weather for it right now," he said. "This week alone, over the weekend, we've had two or three small grass fires that we've been able to get on right away and hold at bay, but all it takes is a little bit of wind or a steep hillside (and) we could be looking at evacuations."

"It happens that fast," he said.

"There's no guarantee that there won't be another 2003," said Brian Simpson, executive director of the provincial Wildfire Management Branch.

Although Simpson said this fire season got off to a slow start, and the number of fires is still slightly below average, he noted areas like the coast are experiencing unusually dry conditions. Tuesday marked the 33rd consecutive day of sunshine in Metro Vancouver, making July the sunniest month on record.

"Coastal fires tend to be very difficult to control because of the heavy, heavy fuels that you have to contend with," Simpson said. "It takes a lot more energy to put one of those fires out once you get going, and that can be costly on our resource capacity."

But Simpson takes comfort that many lessons were learned as a result of 2003, and the government is now much more prepared to deal with wildfires.

Resources have been substantially increased, including eight new 20-person unit crews and 30 more initial attack crews, Simpson said. The entire fleet, including vehicles and equipment, has also been modernized, so it is faster and more cost-effective, he said.

Stephanie Salsnek lives about three kilometres from the White Lake blaze near Okanagan Falls that started last weekend and was fully contained by Tuesday. An evacuation alert for about a dozen homes was lifted. Salsnek said she was blown away by the effectiveness of the firefighting team.

"When you see that aerial ballet of the bombers and, later on, the choppers, you realize they know exactly what they are doing," she said.-

Simpson said vast improvements in communication were tested in 2006, when a fire bore down on Tumbler Ridge.

We "evacuated the whole community without incident, looked after all those people and all the issues that come with that, and then returned them back to their community," he said. "For me, that was a turning point, knowing that we had done that very efficiently (and) very effectively."-