As of Sunday, August 20 there are currently 137 wildfires burning across the province, including 12 ones that started up Saturday.
Since April 1st, there’s been over 1,057 reported fires, and suppression efforts have cost more than $345.3 million.
Chief Fire Information Officer Kevin Skrepnek says the unstable weather in the south should stop earlier in the week.
“Good in the sense that we likely won’t be seeing a lot of wind and lightning but continue to dry conditions for many parts of the province and relatively warm.”
After that, he says another cold front could be problematic.
“Friday (August 18th), we really dodged a bullet a little bit in terms of that wind event that we had. It wasn’t necessarily as strong as what we had been expecting, for what we’ve been bracing for, so we have a potential repeat of that coming up this week again Wednesday Thursday.”
The largest fire is now the “Plateau” fire burning in the Cariboo. The Chezacut, Tautri, Bishop’s Bluff, Baezaeko, Wentworth Creek, Arc Mountain, and others have combined into one massive, 438,772-hectare blaze. This fire has two BC Wildfire Service Incident Management Teams, over 360 firefighters, and 24 helicopters.
The Hanceville-Riske Creek is 227,051.0 hectares and about 25% contained. There are 342 firefighters, 15 helicopters, 95 pieces of heavy equipment.
The Elephant Hill blaze is now 168,092.0 hectares and 25% contained. There are 548 firefighters, 16 helicopters, and 123 heavy equipment battling that one.
In total, there is over 3,600 personnel working on these fires and 171 aircraft.
(With files from Spencer Gowan, MyPrinceGeorgeNow.com)
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