Rainy weather has been a welcome sight for northern BC, but with the rain comes storms and wind.
The BC Wildfire Service says lightning is the biggest problem when it comes to new fires, but wind gusts are proving just as problematic.
“115 new fires across the province yesterday… Almost all of them lightning caused,” says chief fire information officer Kevin Skrepnek, “This is a significant number by any measure to see in a single day, but we had really excellent initial attack success with many of these fires. But, we do have a number of new major incidents as a result of this activity.”
259 wildfires are burning across BC, with 22 new starts today.
Fire-fighting costs rising to $136 million so far this year, and 9 evacuation orders are currently in place, mostly in the southern regions of the province.
150 extra personnel have been brought in from Ontario and Australia to aid in the firefighting.
“Given the conditions we’re seeing, we just want to remind the public to be cautious in the back country, given the fact we’re seeing such a high number of fire starts daily,” says Skrepnek, “Many of these are lightning-caused, so the last thing we want to be concerned with right now is diverting resources to preventable human-caused fires.”
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