Some of the biggest wildfires spark due to people throwing cigarettes out of car windows or littering.
Fire departments throughout Vancouver Island are urging people to extinguish their cigarette butts properly, so they don’t spark a wildfire.
The massive Barrier-McLure wildfire in 2003 started because of someone improperly extinguishing a cigarette butt, resulting in a forest fire that burned more than 26,000 hectares, burned 72 homes, nine businesses and caused the evacuation of 38 hundred people.
Fines for starting a wildfire, intentionally or not, range from $383 to $1,150 dollars.
Here’s a link to a list of fines.
