Third Consecutive Record-Breaking Wildfire Season In B.C.

author-image
Priyadarshinee N
New Update
NULL

With another hot, dry summer ahead, B.C. is poised for a third consecutive record-breaking fire season after 2017 and 2018 rewrote the record books.

Pockets of northeast and northwest B.C. are already rated at “extreme danger” of fire, while the Central Coast and parts of Vancouver Island were rated as high danger, according to the B.C. Wildfire Service.

Up to 60 per cent of the snowpack has already melted due to unseasonably hot weather and the forecast is for more of the same.

The area burned by forest fires in each of 2017 and 2018 was the highest ever recorded in B.C. and three times the 10-year average.

Advertisment

“(Bad fire seasons) are not outliers anymore,” said Chris Bone, a climate researcher from the University of Victoria. “We aren’t having an off year … we are living in a new norm of unprecedented wildfires and everything that goes with that.”

The past two summers saw widespread air quality advisories lasting for weeks and months across much of the province.

“The spike in physician visits due to respiratory issues are also getting to unprecedented numbers,” he said. “All these impacts of wildfires are getting to levels we have never seen before.”

The B.C. Centre for Disease Control reported a 120-per-cent increase in daily physician visits and an 80 per cent increase in asthma medication prescriptions last summer.

b-c-wildfires bc wildfires
Advertisment