Lightning Sparks More B.C. Wildfires While The Cost Of Fighting Them Soars
VANCOUVER (CP) -- The forest fire situation in B.C. flared up Saturday as fire officials said 14,000 lightning strikes hammered the province, sparking more than a dozen new wildfires.
``Weather is not doing well,'' said B.C. Fire Information Officer Nancy Argyle on Saturday, forecasting a tough night ahead for fire crews as thunderstorms rolled through much of the B.C. Interior.
Almost 440 fires were burning around the province on Saturday, compared to 56 burning in the province last June, Argyle said.
Wind gusts reaching up to 80-kilometres per hour were making the problem worse.
Wind caused a fire in north-central B.C. to expand at an alarming rate. More than 200 fire fighters battled that the 80-square-kilometre blaze burning about 65-kilometres southwest of Vanderhoof.
``That area is being hammered,'' Argyle said, adding the area is extremely dry because most of the forest has been killed by pine beetles.
The fire was demonstrating rank-6 behavior - the highest possible level - and was ``too dangerous in some cases to fight,'' Argyle said.
The fires popping up in Prince George and the northwest fire regions were of the greatest concern for officials Saturday, because they have the most potential to encroach on communities, she said.
Lillooet residents remained on alert despite a solid effort by crews to contain the fire that had shrunk down to 13-square-kilometres, officials said.
Some areas of the province saw a few millimetres of rain overnight but not enough to douse the flames, said Fire Information Officer Kevin Matuga.
Residents in the tiny Cariboo village of Kluskus decided to leave their community voluntarily Friday because of dense smoke caused by two forest fires. The town, located near Quesnel, has been under an evacuation alert since Thursday.
Argyle said the largest fire in B.C. is the Swan Lake fire, a blaze raging near the Yukon border. High winds had blown that fire to 100-square-kilometres, but it was remote and not a threat to homes.
The cost of fighting the fires is also soaring.
The province has already hit the $20 million mark - more than twice the amount spent fighting forest fires at the same time last year, Argyle said.
B.C. has a direct fire budget of about $50 million for the fire season - and if the costs exceed that, an open vote within the Ministry of Forests will be held on whether to increase the budget.
Fire damage last year cost about $700 million and involved thousands of municipal, provincial and armed forces personnel.
More than 300 homes were destroyed and about 50,000 residents evacuated when fires ripped through urban areas in the B.C. southern interior last summer.
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