General Fire side chat, bring your s'more's and sticks

[Frisk]

Over 350,000 hectares of land has already burned in the province this year, which is more than all of 2003. Most of it is in the northern areas around Fort St John and Fort Nelson. The donnie creek fire north of Fort St john is 230,000 hectares which is one of the largest in BC's recorded history.

[Catsumi]

The ONLY upside to that story ^^^^ is that mercifully, we haven’t been hit with the smoke. Yet.

When I flew to BC in 1969 the province was green with forests seen from both sides of the aircraft. Mile upon mile of lush forest.

Often wonder just how much is left after logging,fires and pine beetle.

[ferri]

The Weather Channel just posted this on facebook:

[Clipper]

The ONLY upside to that story ^^^^ is that mercifully, we haven’t been hit with the smoke. Yet.

When I flew to BC in 1969 the province was green with forests seen from both sides of the aircraft. Mile upon mile of lush forest.

Often wonder just how much is left after logging,fires and pine beetle.

here you go: http://nfdp.ccfm.org/en/data/fires.php

[Queen K]

The highway to Tofino around the Port Alberni area is suffering greatly with road closures and detours on to logging roads. The I Love Vancouver Island facebook site is riff with information about the conditions.

[Frisk]

Satellite image of the Donnie creek fire from yesterday. It's over 300,000 hectares and spans nearly 120 kilometers across.

[Glacier]

The highway to Tofino around the Port Alberni area is suffering greatly with road closures and detours on to logging roads. The I Love Vancouver Island facebook site is riff with information about the conditions.

[GordonH]

Canada is burning up from East coast to west coast.

[Frisk]

Donnie creek fire is 465,000 hectares, it's nearing the size of the 2017 plateau fire, the largest on record in BC.

[Gone_Fishin]

As I see it, a lot of these fires are started from so-called "Controlled burning" that gets of out control when winds come up. Too often the people doing these burns don't have the necessary gear on hand (ie: water source and pumps/hoses, etc) to stop a fire if it gets going. In the lower valleys, usually April 15 is the cut off date for controlled burning but on non fire-protected areas, Native lands or higher altitude areas it seems that it can go well into May. Maybe time to stop this and ONLY do burning in the winter time. What is happening now is not working.

That's incorrect. There are no controlled burns that have escalated into these infernos we are dealing with today.

Controlled burns are the number one defense we have at our disposal to prevent catastrophic fires that raze forests and burn people's homes.

Fire suppression has, in fact, caused these mega-fires that we're dealing with right now. We've taken away nature's ability to manage forest fuels and cleanse herself of the debris (cones, needles, branches, windthrow, standing dead, thick ingrowth) that result in massive fires.

[nepal]

,
Just curious, are there really more forest fires than a few decades ago, or has the reporting of these become hyper-reporting to perpetuate modern hyper-news?

I recall many big forest fires in 60’s, with smoke drifting all the way to Europe from Canada. In those days we had two black & white TV channels and two AM radio stations, and forest fires hardly made the news.

Also, population has expanded into forest interface areas and there are nominally more human caused events. Maybe global warming plays a part too, but don’t know for certain.
.
Nowadays worried young people might think the world has drastically changed, but much of the change is modern hyper-media.

[Frisk]

Central part of the province is getting hit again this year. This is a satellite image from yesterday afternoon. I'm surprised there's even anything left there after 2017/18.

[Frisk]

Hopefully this smoke doesn't drift south towards us. The number of fires is staggering

[ferri]

Wow! It looks like it's going to drift south though.

https://firesmoke.ca/forecasts/current/ ... rTXXRU4NaI

[MCB]

I live in Vanderhoof and I've been watching the evac alert creep closer to the town. Saik'uz is definitely under an evac alert (I work with people from there) and the smoke up here is honestly brutal.