B.C. wildfire damage beats 1958 record

906 hectares lost, thousands more expected

As of this week, more than 906,000 hectares of British Columbia have been consumed by wildfires since April — easily surpassing any year on record for the province.

And with several more weeks of summer to go, thousands more hectares of brush and forest are expected to fall to the flames before autumn.

“Temperatures should be relatively seasonal going forward, so that’s one silver lining,” Kevin Skrepnek with the B.C. Wildfire Service told the Canadian Press Thursday.

However, high winds and a lack of rain will be keeping forests ablaze for the time being.

A total of 1,030 fires have ravaged B.C. in the past five months — a rough average of seven per day. As of Thursday, 149 of them are still burning.

The fires have blanketed much of Western Canada in a summerlong smoky haze.

This week, Cold Lake, Alta., briefly logged a 10 on the Air Quality Health Index, the most hazardous rating possible. Across a smokeshrouded swath of Interior B.C., from Prince George to the Okanagan, residents continue to be under a warning to avoid “strenuous outdoor activities.”

The previous wildfire record for the province dates to 1958, when 855,968 hectares burned.

The size of the 2017 burned area is equal to more than one and a half Prince Edward Islands, and virtually all of Cape Breton Island. It’s equivalent to 2,250 Stanley Parks, with several dozen more Stanley Park-sized areas burning every day.

By season’s end, B.C.’s total could well be close to double the size of the 590,000 hectare fire that swept through Fort McMurray in 2016.

In previous years, B.C.’s 60-year-old record has easily held its own against other major fires, including the province’s famous 2003 “firestorm.” That year, fires may have reaped a higher cost, destroying $700 million in property. However, fewer than 300,000 hectares burned.

In fact, no other fire season of the past 70 years has come even close to the 1958 record. The third-place finisher, 1961, saw only 483,097 hectares burned.

At the height of this year’s fires, more than 45,000 people were displaced, including 10,000 people from Williams Lake.

At the outset of August, Emergency Management BC reported that 300 buildings had been burned by the fires, including 71 homes and three commercial buildings.