BCWS says recent thunderstorm activity may spark more wildfires

The BC Wildfire Service says due to recent thunderstorm activity in the south of the province, more fires could spark soon.

The service says that storms may come with rain but also bring dry lightning.

BCWS Director of Provincial Operations Cliff Chapman says the province “picks up” 12 to 24 fires per day, and he expects that trend to continue for the next two or three days, predominantly in the southern fire centres.

“The forecast for the next seven days is we’re going to see kind of a return to seasonal [temperatures of] 25 to 30 degrees instead of 35 to 40, which is great for us from a response perspective, but still doesn’t give that weather that we need to really knock down the hazard and knock down the susceptibility to new fire starts,” said Chapman Tuesday afternoon.

“So we’re still in a period where it’s going to be warm and dry. We’re going to see a little bit of wind influence every day, as well as the potential for more lightning as we move through the next 36 to 48 hours.”

The service says storms also bring strong winds, which will affect the behaviour of fires already burning in that part of the province. Chapman says there’s still “lots of August to go.”

“Still lots of potential out there. And we’re working in the initial attack phase to try to catch these fires when they’re small and avoid them becoming wildfires of note as we move deeper into the summer,” he said.

Information officer for the Shetland Creek wildfire Bryan Zandberg tells 1130 NewsRadio that recent rain in the area made a big difference.

“We had between one and nine millimetres of rain from the thundershowers that came through the region [Monday] afternoon and last night. It’s just been awesome. It really landed on some key areas of the fire,” he said. “We’re seeing very minimal fire behaviour today, rank one, so mostly just creeping ground fire sending up some smoke.”

Zandberg says despite progress, the Shetland Creek fire remains “huge” with a size of 27,000 hectares. He says they have 185 firefighters, 16 helicopters and a lot of heavy machinery.

“They sort of wrapped a lot of the fire, but we don’t have containment on the west side and some of the southwestern part in Murray Creek,” he said.

Last week, BCWS implemented an Area Restriction Order within the vicinity of the Shetland Creek Wildfire. All provincial parks, recreation areas, and forest service sites in the region around the fire were closed.

Zandberg says BCWS is reminding non-residents that they should not be accessing the area.

“It is an ongoing fire, there is a lot of smoke that still comes up. Crews are really active in there. There are dangerous trees. you can hear them falling, toppling over when you’re in the bush,” said Zandberg.

There are 341 active wildfires across B.C. right now, eight of which are classified as wildfires of note.

-With files from Anthony Atanasov.