B.C. campers warned of fire risk
VANCOUVER — Anyone heading into the woods for the long weekend is being implored to take special care to prevent forest fires because officials expect to have their hands full with the blazes sparked by lightning.
Fire information officer Kevin Skrepnek said an unstable weather pattern would bring lightning on the weekend and while that might come with some rain, he said it would probably be little more than a spritzing.
“Some people get the assumption that it’s removed the danger. Not at all,” Skrepnek said.
“It takes a pretty sustained period of cooler weather and precipitation to lower the fire danger rating, especially given the amount of days we’ve seen in a pretty hot and dry situation. And of course, with that rain came lighting which has now created a whole raft of new fires that we need to be responding to.”
The south Island was doused with showers on Friday. There’s a chance of thunderstorms and associated rainfall on the weekend, said Doug Lundquist of Environment Canada.
Open fire or campfire bans have recently been put in place in the Coastal, Kamloops, Southeast and Cariboo fire districts. The Coastal region includes Vancouver Island.
The fire danger remains at high to extreme in some parts of B.C. On Vancouver Island, the fire danger varies from low in parts of the southwest to extreme in parts of the northeast.
Skrepnek said more than 100 fires started in B.C. Thursday, but the vast majority were small and were contained.
While even a little bit of rain is welcome, Skrepnek said it can also bring about complacency among those that use the backcountry. That means people may not be looking out for fires or feeling the same need to report them, he said. As well, so-called holdover fires can flare up as long as two weeks after a lightning strike.
“A phenomenon we see quite often is a lightning system will move through and there will be lightning strikes. It doesn’t necessarily cause a fire right off the bat, but it might be simmering in the ground and after a week or two weeks, it can still be lurking in there,” Skrepnek said.
“Once the wind conditions pick up, that can then turn into a fire at that point. We refer to those as hold-over fires. So even though we’re responding to already 100 new fires … we could be seeing more down the road that are a result of this lightning system that haven’t actually appeared yet.”
Heavy equipment and helicopters are being used to fight some of the new fires, but Skrepnek said others are being monitored to ensure they don’t blaze out of control. He noted forest fires are a healthy part of the life cycle for many tree species, and fires also help clean out the forest floor.