More than 550 structures were destroyed by wildfires this summer in B.C., including 343 homes.

The 567 structures lost is considerably higher than other recent, catastrophic wildfire seasons in the province. According to the BC Wildfire Service, 158 structures were lost in 2018 and 502 structures burned in 2017.

The BCWS did not have exact numbers for the number of homes lost this past summer, although the Parliamentary Secretary for Emergency Preparedness, Jennifer Rice, reported that figure at 343 in an opinion-editorial published last weekend.

Within Thompson-Nicola Regional District boundaries, at least 161 structures burned this summer as a result of five different wildfires. That figure excludes losses in the Village of Lytton boundaries, where 90 per cent of the town was destroyed by fire on June 30; Friday also marks 100 days of most Lytton residents being evacuated.

The most destructive fires have been the White Rock Lake fire, the Sparks Lake fire and the Lytton Creek wildfire, with structure losses also reported by the Tremont Creek and July Mountain fires, among others.

For this year, there have been 868,199 hectares of land burned by wildfires, which makes 2021 the third-worst year on record in terms of land burnt. In 2018, fires burned more than 1,350,000 hectares, which broke the record set in 2017 of more than 1,210,000.

It’s unclear where 2021 ranks for years with most structure losses, but it likely in the top-two; hundreds of homes, businesses and other building were lost to wildfires in the Interior during the 2003 wildfires, in places like Kelowna, Barriere and McLure.