BC’s fire risk situation looking much better than this time last year

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – As the BC Day long weekend approaches, you may be planning a trip into the great outdoors.

If you’re packing up the tent, you may also want to throw in a bag of marshmallows.

The campfire ban and fire risk situations are much different than they were this time last year. There had been more than 1,200 fires in BC by this point in 2015.

Fast forward to now: There have been just under 550 so far in 2016, according to Fire Information Officer Claire Allen.

“Throughout the southern portions of the province, we’re seeing a lot of low to moderate fire danger rating,” she tells us.

There aren’t any campfire bans.

“But there are Category 2 open fire prohibitions in the Coastal Fire Centre, Kamloops Fire Centre, and Southeast Fire Centre. Category 2 open fire is two metres by three metres in size,” Allen explains.

“What we do with the fire danger ratings and for any kind of open fire prohibitions is that we monitor the situation daily — looking at weather for the day, looking at how dry our forest fuels are — and we make a daily assessment about that.”

Last July, a ban was issued on all campfires, fireworks, and open burning across the entire province.

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