It’s been a record-setting wildfire season in B.C., although it’s one with an asterisk.
More total hectares have been burned this spring and summer than in any other year, and fire season isn’t close to being finished. Yet when it comes to comparing impact damage, such as homes burned and evacuation alerts and orders, plus this year’s financial costs, 2018 isn’t as bad as other years.
“(Total hectares burned) is certainly just one benchmark of assessing the severity and the impact of a fire season,” said B.C. Wildfire Service chief information officer Kevin Skrepnek. “It certainly doesn’t always correlate to a higher degree of human impact.
“We’ve certainly seen much worse fire seasons in terms of impacts to people in communities and certainly in terms of structures burned as well. So we have set that record in terms of total area burned, but definitely not the worst season on record from the broader sense.
“Years like 2017 or 2003, just to name a few, definitely the overall impact of those years to property, environmental values and certainly timber values was quite a bit higher than this year.”
As of Thursday, there were 512 fires currently burning in B.C., with Skrepnek stating that number has been “going down on a day by day basis, given the turn in the weather and the fact that we’re definitely making some good progress out there.”
Since April 1st, the fiscal start of B.C.’s fire season, there have been 2,015 fires which have burned an estimated 1,252,000 hectares. That number is now the record for the number of hectares burned in B.C., surpassing 2017’s tally of 1,216,000 hectares.
According to the B.C. Wildfire Service, the 10-year average (2007-16) for total fires in a year is 1,692, while the average for total hectares burned is 151,041.
As of today, there are also 31 evacuation orders affecting 1,551 properties and 54 evacuation alerts affecting 10,475 properties.
Financially, the B.C. Wildfire Service has spent $316 million to date battling wildfires this year. In 2017, $568 milllion was spent. From 2007 to 2016, the yearly financial average during that span was $178 million.
In a direct comparison to 2017, the year-to-date costs for last year were $442 million.
In the Kamloops fire centre, which includes the Okanagan, there have been 417 fires that have burned an estimated 53,000 hectares. In the Coastal fire centre, 278 fires have burned an estimated 160,000 hectares.
“In terms of where that money is being spent, it’s a hard question to answer,” said Skrepnek. “This year, somewhat uniquely, we have seen activity really across the province, one corner of the province to the other. It will take a while before we’ve broken those costs down to a fire-by-fire basis.”
There are more than 4,500 personnel currently fighting fires in B.C., with more than 850 being from out of province. That includes firefighters from Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and, most recently, 51 from Washington state. Skrepnek said the American firefighters will be working close to the Canada-U.S. border, in the Coastal and Kamloops fire centres.
Weather-wise, cooler temperatures and higher humidity levels have helped, but Skrepnek was cautious when asked if the worst is over for B.C.
“We’ve definitely seen a shift,” he said. “We’re not going to be seeing those kind of high temperatures, summer-like conditions, based on the forecasts we’re seeing. It’s unlikely they are going to return. I doubt we’ll see anywhere in the province breaking the 30 C degree mark again for the remainder of the year, unless we see a real dramatic shift into September.
“Lower temperatures, higher humidity, that’s definitely gone a long way in terms of reducing the fire behaviour that we’re seeing out there. Certainly some areas have seen rain, but it has not been completely wide spread. There’s definitely some parts of the province that have seen rain – it hasn’t been a whole lot — and certainly there are some areas that are just bone dry.”
He later said “it’s probably safe to say that the worst is over, but as I’ve kind of mentioned, definitely some areas of the province though that are very much under threat. And it is not uncommon to see a relatively warm and dry September as well.”