Nearly one-third of all forests observed by Prince George’s Fire Centre, deep in British Columbia’s northeast, could be lost to wildfire by the end of this year. That is according to BC Forest Minister Ravi Parmar, who said that nearly 7,000 square kilometres of forests observed by the centre have been lost since the start of June, by far the most damage observed from the province’s six different fire centres.
“People in the area have endured not just the physical threat of fires, but the emotional toll of displacement, smoke and uncertainty,” Parmar said during a visit to the fire-affected region this week. Over the past two fire seasons alone, the province says wildfires have burned more forest area in the region than in the previous 60 years combined, a total of more than 10% of the region’s land mass.
As a region, the Prince George’s Fire Centre spans more than 330,000 square kilometres, making it ten times the size of Vancouver Island, where it has witnessed some of the province’s most destructive wildfires, including the 2023 Donnie Creek wildfire, the largest recorded in B.C.’s history. Last May, the Parker Lake wildfire forced the evacuation of thousands of Fort Nelson residents and the nearby Fort Nelson First Nation.
“That community knows all too well the devastating impacts of fires,” Parmar said. “They remain cautious and certainly are doing their part in fire-smarting their communities.”
Boreal and sub-boreal forests are vulnerable to intense fires.
Experts say the conditions fuelling the fires are deeply rooted in long-term drought and a rapidly changing climate: “This region of the province is in a multi-year drought. It has been in a drought condition for six or seven years now,” said Lori Daniels, a forestry expert and professor at the University of British Columbia. She says the boreal and sub-boreal forests of the northeast are particularly vulnerable to intense fires because of their deep, organic soils.
“We see these fires burning down deep into the soil as well as burning above ground,” Daniels said. “Some of the fires currently burning in northeast B.C. have been burning since May of 2023.”
These “holdover” fires, she explained, can smoulder underground through winter, only to resurface and reignite in the spring and summer.
When fires burn hot and fast enough, they can also generate their weather systems, including towering pyrocumulonimbus clouds, Daniels says. Though they don’t bring any rain, they do create weather that can aggravate an already critical fire situation.
According to the B.C. Wildfire Service crews are now routinely forced to dig deep below the surface to extinguish underground blazes: “The drought itself has caused the fire to burn into the root systems of the trees,” said fire information officer Taylor Colman. “So it’s not as simple as just extinguishing from the surface.”
Colman says fuels in the region, such as dead leaves, branches, and dry grass, remain highly susceptible to ignition and fire danger ratings remain high to extreme. She says the wildfire service is continuing to pre-position crews and equipment in the northeast to respond to new starts and manage ongoing fires.
Parmar says the province is ramping up investments in year-round firefighting capacity and working with First Nations on prescribed and cultural burning as mitigation strategies: “We’re preparing for the worst, but hoping for the best,” he said. “And we’ll undoubtedly be spending whatever dollars we need to ensure that we’re protecting communities.”
