BC Wildfire crews still busy as end of season nears

The end of the wildfire season is approaching, but crews are still very busy.

B.C. Wildfire Service says there are four “wildfires of note” burning in the province.

Among those four are; Battleship Mountain, Bearhole Lake and Dinosaur Lake which are all in the Prince George Fire Centre region. Then there’s the Heather Lake wildfire.

The Heather Lake fire has forced an evacuation order in parts of Manning Park, east of Hope.

The fire started in Washington last month and has grown to about 1900 hectares in size. It’s currently burning about five kilometers southwest of Manning Park Resort.

Shaelee Stearns, a fire information officer with the Kamloops Wildfire Centre, says the good news is that fewer square kilometers have burned so far this wildfire season compared to last year.

“Looking at how early versus how late our warming trends started and the temperature in the snow pact we had from over the winter and how fast those fuels are drying out. Last summer we had an extended period of warmth where the fuels were drying out a lot faster and a lot sooner than what we saw this summer. We’re still having warm temperatures, but it hasn’t been as hot as it was last summer.”

And as the wildfire season winds down, Stearns says it’s hard to predict how things will wrap as we inch closer into the Fall.

“We really rely on looking at the past and the trends that we’re seeing,” Stearns said.

“Some of these fires, they are more of a sustained action. So the Keremeos Creek Wildfire, that’s likely a fire you’ll see burning until there’s a significant weather change. So for some of these fires, you might still see them on the map for awhile ahead.”