A firefighter uses a drip torch to set a planned ignition on a wildfire burning near a highway outside Vanderhoof in northern British Columbia, on July 11.Jesse Winter/The Globe and Mail
The number of fires burning in British Columbia has surged amid hot dry weather, stretching resources thin and leading to more evacuations of rural and First Nations communities – with rain forecast early next week expected to bring lightning rather than relief.
More than 320 fires were burning across the province on Wednesday, and at least 12 new evacuation orders or alerts had been issued overnight. Thirty-seven of Canada’s 55 new wildfires started that day ignited in B.C., according to the latest situation report from the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre.
And rain forecast for many parts of the province starting as early as Sunday could make the situation worse in B.C., where 205 out-of-control blazes were recorded Wednesday, 13 of which posed a threat to public safety.
Mike Flannigan, a professor at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops who has been studying the interaction of fire with weather and climate for more than 35 years, said that’s because this new weather front may not bring much rain, but it is likely to bring more wind as it enters the region followed by lightning – the natural phenomenon that typically starts about 60 per cent of the wildfires in B.C.
Wildfire options ‘exhausted’ as lightning, drought strain resources in B.C. district
“If there’s not a tonne of rain, there’s often lighting on the front too, so, it’s a double-edged sword the best of times,” Dr. Flannigan said Wednesday.
B.C.’s emergency information website said that about 150 people are out of their homes and hundreds more are on evacuation alert. Days of drought conditions and lightning strikes have sparked fires across the Regional District of Bulkley-Nechako in the Interior, straining resources and spurring a number of new evacuation orders and alerts.
Mark Parker, chair of the regional district that spans more than 70,000 square kilometres and captures the towns of Smithers and Vanderhoof, said the lightning and dry conditions have “compounded things immensely.”
Every corner of the region is dealing with dangerous conditions that continue “to fuel more fires and stretch resources so thin,” Mr. Parker said.
“You can look out one window, and it’ll be a fire. You can turn and go to the other side of your house, look out the window and see another fire,” he said. “Just this pure number of fires, it’s something we haven’t seen before.”
Flames are not threatening any large communities in B.C., but an additional evacuation order has been issued for the fire just east of the Village of Burns Lake and evacuations are also posted for a number of properties outside Houston.
Mr. Parker said there’s an “extreme fire position” throughout the district, causing anxiety for residents because of the visuals of blazes burning within sight of their homes. He said the best thing that could happen would be for rain to come and slow down the spread of existing fires, but that the drought conditions currently are an “extreme problem.”
Across the Rockies, there were 115 active wildfires burning in Alberta, with 14 considered out of control. The province bore the brunt of the record-setting early wildfire season this year, with thousands of people forced from their homes and hundreds of thousands of hectares burned this spring.
Further north, Yukon officials are dealing with a blaze west of Whitehorse that has grown to 14 square kilometres and crews are protecting the Alaska Highway and homes on the northern flank, building guards to ensure flames cannot move closer to the city.
Meanwhile, the Northwest Territories wildfire agency said Wednesday that 78 wildfires were actively burning across the territory, as several communities reported breaking temperature records in recent days as residents try to beat the heat.
Jesse Wagar, a meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada, says Norman Wells and Fort Good Hope in the territory set new all-time maximum temperature records at 37.9 C and 37.4 C.
The last records – on any day of any – for the two Northern communities were when thermometers hit 35 C in 1989 in Norman Wells and 1920 in Fort Good Hope.
Another of the many metrics for measuring this year’s unprecedented season, Dr. Flannigan said, is the number of pyrocumulonimbus firestorms already observed across Canada. So far, there have been 90 recorded, he said, which is well above the previous national record of 50 for an entire season and will likely surpass the previous global record of 100.
He likened the wind sucked up by these destructive blazes to the way a roaring fireplace can suck in a draft, but multiplied by “a million or a billion times.”
With reports from The Canadian Press