The Premier of B.C. says he’s hopeful money budgeted to fight wildfires this year will be enough.
The province has boosted the budget for the BC Wildfire Service by 58 per cent to $101-million, however the cost to fight fires has surpassed that amount for seven straight years.
John Horgan points out that more than $900-million has been spent altogether to fight fires in the past two years alone
“The money is an increase over previous years and I’m hopeful it will be enough and when I say that, that means I hope we don’t have any fires this season,” Horgan said.
“But based on past practice, based on our inability for successive governments, this is not an NDP problem or a Liberal problem, it’s a BC problem.”
He admitted the issue is not a new one for levels of government.
“We have not been putting in the resources in to maintaining our forests,” Horgan said.
“We have not put the resources in to cleaning out fuel from the forest floor, and we need to accelerate that work, and Doug Donaldson [Forests Minister] is working on that as well.”
Doug Donaldson was in Kamloops earlier this week, where he said that $10-million will be spent on a strategy for prescribed burns.