PENTICTON — Heart-pounding dashcam footage shows an equestrian instructor driving through thick smoke, flying embers and active flames while evacuating livestock from a Summerland animal sanctuary as the Bald Range wildfire exploded Friday evening.
The video, recorded around 6:30 p.m. on Aug. 7 along Fish Lake Road, follows a horse trailer through rapidly deteriorating conditions. Visibility drops sharply as the sky turns orange-red, sparks streak past the windshield and fire burns along both sides of the road.
The driver was Michelle Van Baalen, a local equestrian instructor with Equineimity. She and helpers successfully got 10 equines, five goats and two rabbits out of New Beginnings Animal Sanctuary.
According to Van Baalen’s Facebook account, a friend texted her a photo of a smoke plume at 5:07 p.m. while she was out for dinner in Penticton. She and passenger Sarah paid the bill, got on the road and began calling every horse person, client and friend in the area to warn them and request help.
Three others had already started hooking up trailers and were loading horses at the sanctuary when Van Baalen arrived. The group got the animals out and drove through the flames. By then the fire had reached about 5,000 hectares.
“We were able to get 10 equines out by 6:30 pm, 5 goats and 2 rabbits,” Van Baalen wrote. “We drove through the flames.”
They dropped the first load and returned to assist those who had helped them. Those people had already been successfully evacuated, so Van Baalen made late-night calls and took two more horses from a neighbouring farm because she still had room. That farm was ordered to evacuate four hours later. The 12 horses now are safe in Naramata.
Viewers of the footage have repeatedly commented on how remarkably calm Van Baalen remained throughout the ordeal. Audio from the footage captures her and her “ride or die passenger” Sarah reassuring one another as conditions worsened.
Van Baalen can be heard focusing on controlled, deep breathing while deliberately driving along the centre line of the road — a strategy that helped her maintain visibility of the road edges through the dense smoke and falling embers.
Not long after the footage was taken, Fish Lake Road became inaccessible by vehicle. Local scanner reports indicated three people were unable to evacuate from the road at that point.
The status of those three individuals remains unconfirmed.
Van Baalen’s response under extreme pressure aligns with the philosophy behind her business name. Equineimity is a play on the word “equanimity” — mental calmness, composure and evenness of temper, especially in a difficult situation. In a January 2025 post explaining her approach, she wrote that equanimity forms the foundation of her horsemanship and teaching.
She described teaching students, including those dealing with anxiety, to acknowledge valid fears while still acting, to slow their heart rate and breathing, and to stay present. Horses, she noted, mirror human mental states, so riders must learn to clear their energy and remain calm to create a safe space for both horse and rider to grow.
“Equineimity is the calmness of equine mind, an ode to personal growth, physically, mentally, and even, spiritually,” she wrote.
The Bald Range wildfire started west of Summerland on Friday afternoon and grew with extreme rapidity, forcing the evacuation of the entire District of Summerland and surrounding areas.
More than 20,000 people were displaced. One fatality has been confirmed. The fire has since grown well beyond 17,000 hectares and remains under active suppression.
