Nearly 1,000 Wildfires In British Columbia In 2023, 1.1 Million Acres Burned, And It's Only Mid-July
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Two-thirds of the more than 300 wildfires currently burning in BC were sparked by lightning as thunderstorms moved through the province over the past several days. Authorities say emergency response resources are stretched thin and the threat of wildfires is expected to continue throughout the summer. Map via BC Wildfire Service.
The Powers Creek fire, located near me just south of Smithers, was only one of roughly 200 lightning-caused wildfires that started over the weekend. In total, the province saw 244 new fires over three days, according to the Wildfire Service. They were largely within the Prince George and northwest fire centres, in B.C.’s north-central Interior. In a media briefing Monday, it was a relief to hear B.C.’s new Minister of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness Bowinn Ma say the words that had been on my mind all weekend.
“I think what’s clear to me is that the climate crisis is here. It is here today. It is no longer something that we can afford to talk about as though it is something that is far off in the future, for our children and our grandchildren to deal with,” Ma said. Chapman compared the current conditions to 2017, one of B.C.’s worst wildfire seasons, when 1.2 million hectares of forest burned. It was topped only by 2018, when 1.3 million hectares burned. Chapman said that, over roughly the same time period that year, there were 190 new fire starts — nearly 25 per cent fewer than this past weekend. “Those starts really drove the next two and a half months,” he said. “All indications are that we will be fighting these fires, as well as additional starts we may pick up in the next few days, and obviously the next few weeks, for the remainder of this summer.”
Already this year, almost a thousand wildfires have burned over 1.1 million hectares in B.C. The Donnie Creek fire in the northeast — the largest in B.C.’s history — accounts for roughly half that.
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Only the Davis Lake fire, the one fire in the south near Mission, is believed to be human caused. All others were caused by lightning. In the far north, the province declared a state of emergency for the Stikine Region, where the Little Blue River wildfire continues to burn out of control just south of the Yukon border. Sparked on Thursday by a lightning strike, on Monday it was 30,000 hectares in size. Most fires of note have triggered evacuation orders or alerts. The Regional District of Bulkley-Nechako issued five evacuation orders and seven alerts over the weekend.
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https://thetyee.ca/News/2023/07/11/BC-Worst-Ever-Fire-Season/?utm_source=weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=170723
