2018 officially the worst B.C. wildfire season on record for area burned

That beats the previous record set last summer when wildfires scorched 1.21 million hectares.

She says one of the big differences between this year and last year was that last year many of the fires were confined to the Kamloops and Cariboo fire centres.

“[The fires] caused quite a lot of evacuations of major towns. So, not to downplay the evacuations and alerts we’ve seen this year — obviously a lot of people have been affected — but I think last year we saw some larger cities being displaced.”

Emergency Management BC confirms that thought, noting 65,000 B.C. residents were evacuated last year, compared to 3,200 people who are out of their homes right now.

Fraser says another key difference between this year and last year is that the fires this year are spread out across the province.

“Really from corner to corner, we’re seeing fire activity right now,” she says.

And with 530 fires continuing to burn in B.C. — including some massive fires in B.C.’s northwest region, Fraser says we’re still not out of the woods yet.

“The central Interior area hasn’t been getting a lot of the rain that we’ve seen in other areas of B.C. and that area still has a high fire danger rating and is continuing to pose challenges.”

by Greg Fry

2018 officially the worst B.C. wildfire season on record for area burned

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