At a time when the wildfire season in B.C. is usually winding down, about 360 fires are still burning across the province.
That’s about twice as many fires as were burning this time last year. Forests Minister Bruce Ralston labelled this year’s wildfire season “the worst in British Columbia’s history.”
“And it’s not over yet,” Ralston added.
B.C.’s largest wildfire happened this year
The Donnie Creek fire, which burned south of Fort Nelson in northeastern B.C., was estimated at over 5,800 square kilometres, the largest wildfire on record in B.C.
It surpassed the Plateau fire that charred 5,210 square kilometres northwest of Williams Lake in 2017 and was previously considered the province’s largest fire.
The Donnie Creek fire started by lightning but was the result of eight fires that grew quickly and merged into one massive blaze. It could burn until winter or continue smouldering and re-emerge next spring, according to the B.C. Wildfire Service.
Amount of land burned was nearly double previous record
Wildfires burned 24,900 square kilometres of land this year, nearly double the 2018 record of 13,600 sq. km. High temperatures, extreme drought and the record-breaking Donnie Creek fire all contributed to the massive amount of land scorched by wildfire this year.
Tens of thousands were forced to flee their homes
Nearly 140,000 people in B.C. were impacted by wildfire evacuation orders and alerts this year — including at least 33,000 people forced out of their homes by evacuation orders.
Climate disaster-related disruptions can have severe impacts on people, far beyond the immediate impacts of displacement, according to Kiffer Card, assistant professor in the faculty of health sciences at Simon Fraser University.
“Some of the [long-term] difficulties people encounter is the ability to control their own thoughts, to stop thinking about something,” Card said. “They’ll be unable to enjoy things that they might otherwise enjoy because they’re so distracted or upset.”
The impact for children can last even longer, he said.
“Somewhere around 10 per cent of youth are experiencing a severe disruption with returning climate anxiety,” Card said. “Those individuals are going to have a worse performance in schools because they can’t focus on their work. They’re going to have worse and lower quality relationships. And that’s going to shape the whole future of the unfolding of their life.”
Four of B.C.’s five largest wildfire seasons happened in last 10 years
Scientists agree that climate change is fuelling larger and longer wildfire seasons across the globe.
In Greece, tens of thousands of people have been forced to flee their homes and abandon holidays as fires spread across the region.
In B.C., four of the five largest wildfire seasons have happened since 2000 and the amount of land burned has increased dramatically since 2015.
Fires were fuelled by extreme drought
Near-record drought conditions across the province created the conditions for B.C.’s worst wildfire season on record, according to hydrologists at University of B.C.
The soils in drought-shrivelled landscapes become “hydrophobic” — so dried and packed down that rainfall runs off before soaking in — which increases the risk of flash flooding in atmospheric-river storm events.
Vernon and Penticton experienced their driest summers since records have been kept, for example. Penticton received just eight millimetres of rain compared with the normal 105 mm, and Vernon 22 mm instead of its normal 122 mm.
And in Kelowna, where the McDougall Creek wildfire destroyed 189 homes at the beginning of August, it was the second-driest summer on record, with just 20 mm of rain coming down when 110 mm is the norm.
— With files from Derrick Penner, Tiffany Crawford and The Canadian Press
