Day 234 – Ready to Burn

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234/365 (August 22, 2010) – With no assistant (Kirk has abandoned me again) I opted to play with matches, but not actually light them. Didn’t think I would be able to manage catching a flame lighting properly without help, so I decided to save that for later.

The forest fires in BC are in full swing with the Cariboo and north-central regions finally taking their turn. For several years everyone has known that a hot dry summer up north would lead to a firestorm since the pine beetle has killed so much of the pine forests. There is so much dead wood standing there and so much tinder dry litter on the forest floors that it was a bonfire just waiting to happen. In 2003 the Okanagan Mountain Park fire received a lot of attention, but it wasn’t the biggest fire in BC’s history. So far this year there haven’t been any major interface fires like the ones around Kelowna, but there are some massive ones currently burning. In particular, three large fires have joined to form what is called the Binta Lake Fire, a massive blaze currently estimated to have scorched 400 square kilometres (40,000 hectares or approximately 100,000 acres). 250 km West of Prince George, it is only 10-20% contained and it (and other fires) are generating smoke that is affecting communities as far away as Calgary and Edmonton in Alberta. Seems like a pretty huge fire, and it is. But there have been bigger ones in BC.

Lava Canyon, in the Chilcotin, saw the largest fire of the 2009 season at 66,719 hectare (667 square kilometres), and led to evacuation orders and alerts.

In 1982, the Eg fire burned 182,725 hectares near the Liard River/Alaska Highway area.

In 1971, the Tee fire destroyed 110,419 hectares of forest near the Liard River/Alaska Highway area.

In 1958, the Kech fire toasted 225,920 hectares in the Kechika Valley, a tributary of the Liard River.

In 1950 the Wisp fire burned from north of the Fort St. John area into Alberta along the Chinchaga River. The total area burned was 1,400,000 hectares. The B.C. portion was 90,000 hectares.

So the Binta Lake fire isn’t there yet, and we certainly have improved the firefighting technology since then, but one wonders if change in climate, or change in our habits has caused an increase in aggressive fires in recent years. Warmer winters, the pine beetle, people building houses closer to forests, forest floors not being cleared by control burns, stupid people flicking cigarette butts out the car window (or the back door!), nature trying to clear out dead material in a natural cycle of events… everything combines I suppose. But for now we just hope for cooler temperatures and rain to help the firefighters get things under control.