File Photo (Image Credit: CFJC Today)

By James Peters

Fire Season

B.C. fire season surpasses 1M hectares burned

Jul 5, 2023 | 4:03 PM

KAMLOOPS — Just five days into July, B.C. is already experiencing one of the worst fire seasons in its history.

In a news conference Wednesday (July 5), B.C. Wildfire Service Operations Director Cliff Chapman said the province recently surpassed 1-million hectares burned in 2023.

“Crossing over the million-hectare threshold this early in the season is quite significant,” said Chapman. “It now ranks as the third-most hectares burned in any fire season in B.C. since we started to track — and we’re in early July. We have the potential for our hot and dry months — July, August and into September — to see even more fires.”

The vast majority of the territory scorched by far so far this year is in the province’s northeast, within the Prince George Fire Centre. One fire, the Donnie Creek blaze north of Fort St. John is the largest on record in B.C., greater in size than all of Prince Edward Island.

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There are at least two months of summer-like conditions ahead, and officials worry the fire season could grow worse. Hot, dry conditions this week are spurring those fears.

“We have pretty good confidence that these warm temperatures that we’ve been seeing are going to persist as we head into the second half of July and the beginning of August,” said Matt MacDonald, the service’s lead forecaster.

“We are expecting an increased number of fire starts in the coming days, primarily owing to the lightning that we have forecast over the next three-to-four days,” he continued.

The lightning is expected to hit east and north of Kamloops.

“The conditions are such that, if lightning hits and we can’t track perfectly where the lightning will hit, we will see new starts in the southern part of the province as well as in the north, and we will surge our resources to those starts,” added Chapman. “But I think it’s important for B.C. to know that we are going to see fire on the landscape with the forecast we have in front of us today.”

Chapman notes the United States and Mexico will send a combined 160 new personnel to B.C. in the coming days.