Get ready to roast some hot dogs and marshmallows.
The B.C. Wildfire Service said recent rains and cooler temperatures will allow it to lift the campfire ban on Vancouver Island as of noon on Wednesday.
The ban had been in effect across the Coastal Fire Centre since July 12.
Fire danger ratings across most of the Island are listed as very low, with some areas on the South Island listed as low.
But there is a need for continued vigilance when it comes to campfires, the service said.
“Although the fire danger has declined due to recent rainfall and cooler, more seasonal temperatures, the public is strongly encouraged to continue exercising extreme caution with any campfire,” the B.C. Wildfire Service said in a statement.
A campfire is no larger than 50 centimetres high by 50 centimetres wide and can be be used for recreation or by a First Nation for a ceremonial purpose.
Category 2 and Category 3 open fires for burning brush, debris and other materials remain prohibited.
The use of fireworks, sky lanterns, binary exploding targets, burn barrels, burn cages and air curtain burners are also banned.
Those restrictions will remain in place until Oct. 31, or until the order is rescinded.
Favourable weather has allowed crews to make good progress in the province’s battle against hundreds of blazes.
There are no longer any “wildfires of note” — blazes that are highly visible or pose a threat to people or public safety — burning in the province.
Earlier this month at least nine blazes had been considered “wildfires of note.”
But fire information officer Emelie Peacock said the change doesn’t mean the wildfire season is over and there are still a handful of evacuation orders and alerts impacting communities around the province.
“It’s certainly welcome news for those people who are able to come back to their communities. But we still do have a lot of fire on the landscape,” she said Monday.
Peacock said more than 700 firefighters and 100 aircraft were still out fighting fires in B.C.
“Our crews are now in what we call the mop-up stage on a lot of our fires, and so they’re doing that really heavy work to ensure that around the edges of a fire, that fire is fully contained,” she said.
“Mop-up” involves groundcrews using water and hand tools to dig down to mineral soil to extinguish fire and eliminate heat in the deeper layers of the forest floor.
Peacock said southern parts of the province saw heavy rain recently, but parts of the north continue to experience drought conditions.
The B.C. Wildfire Service dashboard on Monday afternoon showed the number of active blazes in the province had fallen to about 290, continuing a downward trend from Friday, when there were about 340 fires burning.
It said in an update that rain was expected to be mostly on the coast, with winds increasing in the south and a drying trend was likely to occur quickly due to the underlying drought once the storms move out.
Environment Canada was forecasting a return of warmer, drier weather for most of B.C. as the Labour Day weekend approached.
The wildfire service said earlier that while much of the southern part of B.C. received rain and some parts had heavy precipitation over the weekend, it was accompanied by winds gusting up to 102 kilometres an hour.
The wind “blew trees down along fire lines in the south” and forced a fire camp in Invermere to move to another location, but the service said over the weekend that no one was injured.
The number of out-of-control wildfires in the province dropped to about 79, while more than 10,000 square kilometres of land has been burned in B.C. in this year’s fire season starting April 1.
In last year’s record wildfire season, more than 28,000 square kilometres of land was burned, forcing the evacuations of communities in regions such as the Okanagan and the Shuswap.
