B.C. gets help from out-of-province crews to fight hundreds of wildfires

KAMLOOPS, B.C. — Firefighters in British Columbia are getting some outside help in battling wildfires across the province.

The BC Wildfire Service says more than 180 firefighters and support staff from Saskatchewan, Australia, New Zealand and Mexico will arrive in the province over the next week.

They are joining 20 firefighters from Alberta and 15 from the Northwest Territories who have been in the province since Thursday helping battle wildfires.

The service says there are more than 2,200 people engaged in the province’s wildfire response.

Four water-skimming aircraft from Quebec will also join more than 150 aircraft that are being used to support ground crews.

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Late Friday afternoon, there were 446 active wildfires across B.C.

Most of the fires were caused by some of the thousands of lightning strikes from a nearly week-long series of storms, including about 5,000 strikes recorded Thursday, said Kyla Fraser of the BC Wildfire Service.

“Luckily most of these are burning in remote areas and are quite small at the moment,” she said, “but we are certainly bracing ourselves for more fires of significance to pop up this weekend as a result of weather and the sheer number of fires that we have seen.”

Wildfire risk across the northwestern quarter of the province was ranked at high to extreme, prompting the Regional District of Bulkley-Nechako to issue several evacuation orders and alerts for properties in remote areas around Houston, Burns Lake and Francois Lake.

A campfire ban was also imposed Friday across the northwest region where the wildfire service says six of B.C.’s 14 most significant fires were located.

In southern B.C., the Regional District of Okanagan-Similkameen issued evacuation orders for a handful of properties south of Cawston that were threatened by a nearly 66-square-kilometre wildfire, the largest active fire. 

Along the southeastern boundary with Alberta, Parks Canada said three lightning-caused wildfires were burning in Kootenay, Yoho and Banff national parks. Road closures, area and trail closures, as well as evacuation orders, were in place, the parks service said in a news release.

Those include the continued evacuation of Kootenay Park Lodge and the ongoing closure of Highway 93 through Kootenay National Park from Radium east to Alberta. That route was not expected to reopen until at least Sunday, with drivers detoured to Highway 95 and Highway 1 via Golden.

DriveBC, the B.C. government’s online website of road conditions, issued a travel advisory Friday warning of congestion from Radium to Golden.

— By Beth Leighton in Vancouver.

The Canadian Press