PG Fire Centre preparing for 2024 wildfire season following above seasonal winter

Fire Centres across the province including Prince George are in the process of recalling all of their seasonal staff ahead of the 2024 Wildfire season.

Our neighbors to the east in Alberta have already declared a start to their wildfire season due to warmer-than-normal temperatures and below-average precipitation.

Fire Information Officer, Sharon Nickel told MyPGNow.com that while there is no hard date set for activities here, suppression efforts in our province received a bit of a boost thanks to an investment by the government.

“Last week, the province did announce that there were going to be upgrades to expansion in our aviation fleets as well as additional expansion for equipment for our crews. Those dollars aren’t specific to the Prince George Fire Centre alone, it’s a provincial investment and it aims to strengthen the province’s response to wildfire emergencies.”

Nickel adds grass fires usually occur in the northeast part of the province in May with the majority of wildfires occurring in July and August.

“However, that may be impacted by weather and site conditions. How we saw the drought conditions sort of carry through from the fall of 2022 into 2023 and then we saw an earlier fire season start in May last year in the northeast of the province, which was largely impacted by those site conditions,” added Nickel.

“We can’t really predict when the fire season will start but we can look at trends and the current weather we are experiencing but in terms of being able to say a date as to when the season will start – we can’t give an accurate description there.”

2023 was the most destructive wildfire season on record in BC with 2.84 million hectares burned – the Prince George Fire Centre accounted for 80% of that total.

The Prince George Fire Centre also saw 672 total wildfires all of last year, the next closest was the Kamloops Fire Centre with 388 blazes.

A full report on the 2023 season can be found here.