The BC Wildfire Service says there has been a fair bit of changes in dealing with fires after back-to-back record seasons.

Chief fire information officer Kevin Skrepnek says the past several seasons have been wake-up-calls, to the widespread effects of wildfires and the awareness that has come with them.

“First and foremost, you look at the base firefighting budget. I mean obviously we were going to spend whatever is necessary in terms of protecting communities, things like that. And we’ve seen more than a billion dollars in the past few years spent, but our base budget had been fairly static for quite some time, usually a little more than $60 million. But that’s been nearly doubled to $101 million.”

Skrepnek says there has been an increase in funding as well for programs like Firesmart to make properties more defensible if fires come through.

“We’ve also expanded our personnel as well, brought in more contract firefighters on a longer availability as well. We started that last year, that’s been expanded for this year, nearly doubled. Bringing in aircraft earlier as well, things like that,” he says.

“So definitely, we look at it as a chance to kind of improve continuously as we take these seasons one-by-one. Taking lessons out of them and doing our best to adapt for what’s ahead.”

More than 250,000 square kilometres of land burned in B.C. altogether in 2017 and 2018.