The weekend storm wasn’t nearly enough to dampen the wildfire risk on Vancouver Island and the Sunshine Coast.
Coastal Fire Centre information officer, Dorthe Jakobsen, says after Saturday’s downpour some people in the region decided it was okay to have campfires.
She says the small window of rain and cool temperatures isn’t a green light to start fires again.
“We would just like to reiterate that there is a campfire ban in the Coastal Fire area, except for Haida Gwaii. That means no open fires at all,” she explained. “No beach fires, no campfires, no Category 2 fires, no Category 3 fires, and we ask the public to please respect that because it’s going to get hot again here in the next few days.”
Jakobsen said while precipitation is always helpful it often comes with high winds, which are not helpful.Â
“It’s kind of a mixed bag of good and bad.”
Jakobsen said the forest floor remains tinder dry: “It did give us a little bit of a respite but it’s not enough rain to rehydrate the forest.”
Currently there are 25 active fires in the Coastal Fire Centre, which includes Vancouver Island and the Sunshine Coast.
So far, 5,644 hectares of Coastal forest has burned this wildfire season.
Across B.C. there are 273 active fires, the majority of which are in the B.C. Interior.
And since April 1st, there have been 1,432 wildfires that have slashed through 637,729 hectares of B.C. forests.
Over on the Sunshine Coast, there are a handful of small wildfires burning north of Powell River.
The cause of each of them has yet to be identified.
