No major explosions and no major progress on the wildfire front in the last 24 hours.
Fire Information Officer Kyla Fraser says the number of wildfires burning in B.C. dipped slightly.
“No significant changes overnight, there currently are 535 fires burning across the province.”
Fraser says the complex of fires burning in the Northwest Fire Centre continue to be a big concern.
“Alkali Lake wildfire continues to be the largest, still 118 thousand hectares in size. And unfortunately yesterday, nowhere in the Northwest Fire Centre saw any rain at all, so hopefully we’ll see some of that soon.”
She adds the wildfire season, now the second worst in B.C. history, continues to trudge towards 2017’s record one-point-two-million hectares burned.
“Right now, we’re at just over 970 thousand hectares.”
In Wells Grey Provincial Park a fire near Helmcken Falls is no longer considered a fire of note and is holding at 37 hectares.
Fraser says the good news is people seem to be getting the message.
“We have only seen about 25% of the fires to be human caused. That definitely is a lower number than we have seen in previous years.”
Fraser was asked if the Wildfire Service should expand on the term human caused to cite specifically how each fire was started.
“That would be something people would be interested in. To have a better breakdown of this many were caused by escaped campfires or this many were caused by an ATV. That would definitely be something to look into.”
She says on the weather front while things are looking cooler there is no sign of significant rainfall especially for the northwest with its huge complex of fires.