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Province's 2024 wildfire season now fourth-worst on record

There have been 1,339 wildfires since April 1, which have burned a total of 939,967 hectares
shetland-creek-july-17
On July 17, the Teit Creek and Shetland Creek wildfires near Spences Bridge merged into one. As of Aug. 11, the Shetland Creek wildfire was estimated at 27,229.8 hectares.

Although it still has some way to go to become the worst wildfire season in B.C.’s history, the 2024 season is already the fourth-worst the province has ever seen in terms of the number of hectares burned.

According to BC Wildfire Service, as of Aug. 11 the province had seen 1,339 wildfires since April 1, which have burned a total of 939,967 hectares.

The worst fire season on record in B.C. was 2023, which saw 2,842,275 hectares burned across the province. The 2018 fire season destroyed 1,354,284 hectares, while the 2017 season saw 1,216,053 hectares burned.

While many of B.C.’s worst fires have started in July, August often has significant fire activity as well. In 2017 the province declared a state of emergency from July 7 to Sept. 15. While many of the fires that year started in July, a second wave of fire activity happened in August.

In 2018, a provincial state of emergency was announced on Aug. 15 and lasted for 23 days.

Wildfire season in British Columbia officially starts on April 1 in a given year and runs until March 31 of the next year. However, a new cause for concern is the increasing number of holdover fires — dubbed “zombie fires” by some — which start in one fire season, go underground and/or grow dormant in the winter, then emerge the following spring when the weather warms up and fuel dries out.

“We have dealt with holdover fires for my entire career for 21 years,” said BC Wildfire Service director of operations Cliff Chapman in May. “This is not a new situation for British Columbia.”

What has changed, Chapman said, was the more than 28,000 square kilometres of land that burned in B.C. last year, which when combined with drought conditions has “amplified” the risk stemming from such wildfires.

In January 2024, more than 100 wildfires were still listed as burning in B.C., many more than the typical few dozen holdovers from year to year, according to BC Wildfire Service spokesman Forrest Tower.

Of the 130 active wildfires burning across the province in mid-May 2024, 85 were holdovers from the 2023 fire season.

This year, the majority of fire activity has been in the Prince George Fire Centre area, covering the northeastern part of the province. To date, 744,655 hectares have burned there. In the Kamloops Fire Centre, 51,823 hectares have been burned to date, with the Shetland Creek wildfire between Spences Bridge and Ashcroft accounting for more than half that total (27,229.8 hectares).

Of the 1,339 wildfires in British Columbia this year, 938 (70 per cent) were caused by lightning, and 336 (25 per cent) were human-caused. The cause of the remaining 65 fires (five per cent of the total) is still undetermined.

With files from John Arendt