The BC Wildfire Service is asking for more resources to assist with fires in our province.
BC Wildfire Service Director of Provincial Operations Cliff Chapman said an additional 1,000 more resources have been requested through the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre to aid efforts in our province.
“We are not short a thousand firefighters in BC at this point in time,” he explained.
“We’re not even at the middle of July yet, we have a significant amount of time left in this fire season unless we see a break in the weather, so we are planning ahead, obviously looking into next week but even looking into the next number of weeks, trying to secure resources so that we can rest our staff.”
He said there’s around 2,000 resources actively working on fires in the province.
Chapman added the BC Wildfire Service’s top priority remains responder and public safety.
“The fire conditions we’re faced with in the northern half of the province, also in the south, they are extreme,” said Chapman.
“The fuel conditions are dry, we’re continuing to see temperatures raise above 30 or close to 30, relative humidity is dropping lower, and so we see this fire activity every afternoon which is significant.”
Chapman added there will be scattered showers in BC over the next ten days, but no significant break in the weather.
“It will not be enough. It will be a good reprieve for our response operations, but we need a significant more amount of rain than what’s forecasted,” he said.
“We’re going to continue to see hot and dry weather for the next two weeks which is going to continue to challenge our fire operations and our ground personnel.”
As of 9:18 this morning (Thursday), the Tsah Creek Wildfire remains an estimated 501 hectares, and has not crossed Highway 27.
Crews are still working on constructing guards to limit spread to both the north and south, as well as directly attacking the fire to limit growth towards the highway.
As of this afternoon, the Greer Lake Wildfire has grown to 3,000 hectares.
The BC Wildfire Service is reporting the Finger Lake Wildfire (270 hectares) and Nithi Mountain Wildfire (238) showed no growth since yesterday.
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