It is shaping up to be one of the worst wildfire seasons in BC’s history but the Cariboo has been relatively fortunate so far.
Madison Dahl, a Fire Information Officer at the Cariboo Fire Centre, says as of July 4th there have been 78 fires in the Cariboo and about 2,870 hectares burned.
But she says those numbers are still higher than average.
“We are in that ballpark for total number of fires. The 10-year average, and that’s from 2012 to 2022, the average is 72 fires so far, so we’re at 78. However, the interesting number is the total hectares burned, it’s only 104 total hectares is the average and we’re well over that already this year.”
Dahl says this year’s numbers are also more than in 2017 which was the year that both Williams Lake and 100 Mile House were evacuated.
“Whereas in 2017, you may be shocked to learn that at this point in time there were only 63 fires with only 287 hectares burnt. And by the end of 2017 we had 870.000 hectares.”
Dahl says we had an active spring this year which boosted the numbers.
She says there is just one out of control fire in the Cariboo right now, a 2.5 hectare fire in between Cariboo Lake and Quesnel Lake.
No structures are threatened.
Dahl says 66 percent of the fires throughout the province this year have been human caused.
“Which means they are 100 percent preventable. We do have a campfire prohibition coming into play. We want to make sure that all of the resources that we have available in the Cariboo, and throughout the province, are going towards unpreventable fires, so naturally caused fires.”
The campfire ban will go into effect tomorrow (Friday) at noon in the Cariboo.
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