Another tame wildfire season in the Coastal Fire Centre.
Information officer Dorthe Jakobsen says a cool June and spots of rain during the summer helped keep the forest floor damp.
“The weather was lovely but every few days we’d get some rain,” Jakobsen said. “So we’d get some sun, we’d get some rain… it was a little bit cooler so we didn’t really get the big, hot drying spell that we do sometimes get in the summer.”
Jakobsen said we did get two lightning events in late July and mid-August that sparked some small fires in the region.
Ultimately, Jakobsen says Mother Nature dictates the fire season.
“We got a break on the weather this year, south of the border they didn’t. You just never know what Mother Nature is going to bring and this year was a quiet one,” she added.
“What we colloquially call ‘Juneuary’ is very pivotal for how the season unfolds here on the coast. A good, wet, June does help us out through July and August for sure, keeping those forest fuels moist.”
So far, 1,197 hectares have burned in the region including Vancouver Island and the Sunshine Coast.
That’s just a fraction of 2018’s totals, when fires ripped through 174,942 hectares of coastal forests.
Jakobsen hopes their message of being responsible in the backwoods helped keep wildfires under control.
“We hope that our communication and information efforts are helping to educate the public about how to be safe around open fires and we do know that British Columbians are pretty fire savvy,” she said. “But we do continue to try to give the information to the public so they can continue to be safe.”
As of 2:00pm, the fire danger rating was low through much of the Coastal Fire Centre. That’s the case for the majority of the province except for pockets in the Interior and Northeastern B.C., where it’s moderate to high.
