KAMLOOPS — Lightning continues to cause havoc in B.C.
The BC Wildfire Service says there are now 458 wildfires burning province-wide.
“We’re certainly seeing an increase in fire activity throughout the province,” says Fire Information Officer Kyla Fraser. “Most of those the result of a significant lightning system we’ve seen move through the province, that is persisting through the next couple of days here.”
She says the starts have occurred in all corners of the province, though the majority of them started in the Southeast Fire Centre.
The largest fire is the Snowy Mountain wildfire located 14 kilometres south of Keremeos in the Kamloops Fire Centre. It’s now 6,594 hectares in size. That fire has prompted evacuation alerts for around 900 homes.
Unfortunately, Fraser says the unstable weather is expected to continue,.
“Temperatures are expected to get a little bit cooler, so hopefully we’ll see some precipitation with that lightning. Moving into next week, we’re expecting to go back to a more stable, hot and dry pattern.”
The 458 wildfires is substantially more than the number of fires at this time last year, when there were 126 blazes burning.
However, Fraser says last year’s fires were much more “severe” and had burned around 490,000 hectares. To date this fire season, around 80,000 hectares of forest has been burnt.
