B.C. wildfire reported on the first day of spring

It seems it’s never too early in the year for a B.C. wildfire to spark.

Late Tuesday, the first day of spring, a wildfire was reported a couple kilometres northwest of the community of Lytton.

On Wednesday, BC Wildfire Service crews were en route to the four-hectare fire on Lytton First Nation land.

The BC Wildfire Service said officials are working to confirm whether a structure was damaged by the fire but said that no other buildings are threatened.

Spokesperson Jody Lucius said a blaze this early in the year “is not entirely unusual…especially in an area like Lytton where the snowpack doesn’t tend to be quite as high.”

She also cautioned against reading too much into this early blaze. Lucius said it is too early to predict what type of fire season the province can expect.

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“We are of course monitoring snowpack and things like that and are starting to look at forecasts but certainly none of the work on the fire season outlook has been done,” Lucius said.

Watch Below: Look back at Global’s extensive coverage of 2017’s destructive wildfire season in British Columbia.

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The Lytton area fire is believed to be human-caused.

“Fire safety should always be top of mind for people. Any time that we do have any area of dry grass or other fuels, fire is a risk. Fires will tend to burn less intense at this time of year but it is still a concern that we have,” Lucius said.

Crews are expected to use a controlled burn to help suppress the Lytton-area fire so the size of the blaze is expected to grow.

The 2017 fire season was record-breaking. A larger area burned in the province than in any other year since record keeping began in 1950.

– With files from Simon Little and Liza Yuzda