Ontario Sending Firefighting Personnel to B.C.
Vancouver, B.C. – Wildfires continue to rage throughout the province of British Columbia but help is on the way from Ontario.
B.C.’s Minister of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations Steve Thomson confirmed the news in a media conference in Vancouver this afternoon.
“We’ve been looking for additional resources outside B.C. to help out and we’re set to receive 70 firefighting personnel from Ontario,” he said. “60 will be firefighters while the other 10 will be specialized firefighting personnel.”
He added the fire danger rating throughout B.C. remains “high to extreme” but also encouraged residents to do what they can to help prevent human caused wildfires.
“We need everyone to do their part. If you’re a smoker may sure you extinguish your cigarette and if you’re riding your ATV in the back-country be aware of the tinder-dry conditions.”
Fire information officer Kurtis Isfeld with the B.C. Wildfire Management Branch noted there are currently 184 wildfires burning in the province and with the hot and dry weather in the forecast predicted there would be at least 30 new starts a day for the foreseeable future.
To date, he said the provincial government has spent just over $90 million on fighting wildfires, which is significantly higher than the $63 million the Province had budgeted for at the beginning of the year.
Isfeld said there are currently 9 fires that have “triggered some form of Evacuation Alert or Order,” including the Petitot River fire 115 km northeast of Fort Nelson which was downgraded to an Evacuation Alert last night.
From a resource and preparedness perspective, he added “the availability of resources is at a critical level,” and said “any significant increase in fire load will be difficult to manage.”
As such, Isfeld said they have begun prioritizing fires based “on human life and safety, property, critical values, critical habitat and timber.”
But he also noted the safety of “our responders will come first and foremost.”
Comments
No doubt about it, this hot weather, and increase in forest fires, was predicted by climate scientists.
From the Natural Resources Canada website; “Climate change during the 21st century is expected to result in more frequent fires in many boreal forests, with severe environmental and economic consequences.
From global climate models and scenarios, researchers are interpreting how climate change and climate variability may alter patterns of lightning, fuel moisture, temperature, precipitation and vegetation—all factors that can affect fire occurrence.
Fire-prone conditions are predicted to increase across Canada. This could potentially result in a doubling of the amount of area burned by the end of this century, compared with amounts burned in recent decades. Boreal forests, which have been greatly influenced by fire through history, will likely be especially affected by this change.”
This is nothing compared to what is coming, climate change is only just starting to make it’s presence felt, if you want to find out where we are headed to if we keep pumping carbon into our atmosphere, take a look at this interactive website, and click on the years near the top of the site. It shows how global warming will impact the planet in those future years.
www. global-warming-forecasts.com/wildfires-climate-change-fire-forest-fires.php
copy and paste the link to your browser address bar, then delete the space between the www. and the g
I’m all for global warming, www sent from my idling, air conditioned F 450 diesel
Copy and paste link into your own post, then delete the F 450 and insert your own vehicle type
“Provincial fire officials have spent $64.3-million responding to 622 fires since April 1, compared with 321 fires in the same period last year at a cost of about $30-million.”
Because of global warming, and our refusal to do anything about it, by consistently voting in a climate change denying neo-con federal government, our hard earned tax dollars are literaly going up in smoke. We have already blown through our entire forest fire fighting budget with the hottest months yet to come.
Keep voting in a climate change denying Harprer government everyone, lets vote for our own eventual extinction shall we?
The top two B.C. fire seasons were recorded in 1958 when fires burned 8,590 square kilometres and in 1961 when 4,830 square kilometres of forest land was burned.
So easy to cherry pick data. Unless China and India shut down. Canada’s contribution is like peeing in a river.
Global warming is caused by people consuming – which people like to do – so only solution is to reduce the # of people. The white Europeans have their birth rate down to about 1.6 per couple – we’ll be a visible minority in 50 years – where are all these extra people coming from?
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/b-c-forest-fires-2014-was-3rd-worst-season-on-record-1.2782406
Global warming? It’s that darn David Suzuki! Who needs 7 houses anyways? I can just imagine how much carbon he pukes into the atmosphere heating all 7 of those suckers!
Speaking of atmosphere, I saw that the USA Vice President, Joe Biden, a Democrat I might add, flew into Vancouver for the USA vs Japan gold medal soccer match this weekend. He flew in with his wife in a great big Government jet, a great BIG Government jet! Looks like it was just Joe, his wife and the flight crew! What a waste of fuel and what a huge amount of carbon puked into the atmosphere, just to attend a soccer match!
Sure would be nice if our left-leaning global warming alarmists would give David and Joe a call to express their thoughts on global warming!
That would be you Sophie, get on it!!
Hahaha……thanks for the chuckle Hart Guy. What are those fancy electric $100,000 plus cars the rich greenies drive called ?
ImFrank; Lets both park our vehicles in our carports and close the carport doors. I challenge you to sit in your idling F 450 diesel truck for 2 hours, while I sit in my idling Chevy Spark EV for two hours, bet I will be the one who walks away alive and without brain damage.
I would take this same challenge up with Hart Guy, but it would be difficult to determine whether it was his vehicle’s fumes that caused the brain damage, or if it was a pre-existing condition. ;-)
I have no idea what those $100,000 electric cars the rich folk drive are DI, but the rest of us can drive off with a Chevy Spark EV for just $25,995.
www. caranddriver.com/chevrolet/spark-ev
Sophie, you and I seldom see eye to eye on much of anything. We are both entitled to our opinions! However, your “brain damage” comment was rude and uncalled for! You have hurt my feelings and I believe that an apology is in order!
I’ll let you finish your phone calls to Suzuki and Biden so that you can chastise them for their wasteful energy usage, but I will expect an apology after you are done!
Hey Hart Guy relax. When you can’t defeat an argument through reason insult is a time honored tradition. Ironically the political leader who has used this tactic the most and with great success is STEPHEN HARPER. So Sophic nice to see you stoop to the level of the King of the Neo Cons. In fact PVal use to irritate me but he had sense in his arguments and I grew to respect him. I even started to lean left. You have done more to turn me off voting Ndp or liberal than anyone else Keep up the good work.
The world is ending, the sky is falling. How long we got Sage, one year, two? Oh wait it not even as hot as it was back in the medieval, Roman periods. How about the Holocene optimum or the eemian. Look them up sage.
Nice to see Hart Guy and ski51 adding to the topic of forest fires on this discussion thread… no wait… both of their gossipy chatty comments have nothing to do with the topic at hand. Flattered that I would be the subject of their attention and comments though.
Does this happen often on this site, where the subject of comments are other commenters? Seems a little gossipy and chatty in a church lady kind of way; Oh my, did you see what he/she wrote? Tsk, tsk, tsk…
Beck to the subject at hand, glad we have the additional manpower with the Ontario firefighters on scene, I would expect them to be here until fall the way it is going.
Do not the statistics show this is the same weather as 1969. Lots of weather patterns since then. Relax.
Cost of wildfire suppression per year in BC
2013: $134 million
2012: $155 million
2011: $48.8 million (was a cool wet summer)
2010: $212 million
2009: $382-million (record breaking)
Anyone care to call me on my prediction that we will set a new record this year that will exceed the $382 million spent on wildfire suppression in 2009? Yup, global warming is starting to have a direct cost to us taxpayers now… and we have no one to blame but ourselves for voting in a pro-fossil fuel industry Harper and Christy Clark governments.
Oh, by the way, the listed costs do not include the value of all those hundreds of thousands of hectares in trees / lumber up in smoke and ash.
What?? No apology Sophie??
Many months ago, I made a comment to another poster that in hind site I felt was a little bit rude! I immediately posted an apology to that poster! That’s what someone with character does!
Sophie, it’s now official, you are showing less character than a Right-Wing Harper Conservatives supporting, Clarke Liberals supporting redneck Neo-Con!
How’s it feel!
By the way, how did your chat with Suzuki and Biden go? Did you tell them that they excessive use of fossil fuels is contributing to Global Warming and our forest fire situation (just getting us back on the subject of our forest fire situation).
Cheers!
Sage what no fires in Ontario, what happened to your climate change? Ever here of El Nino, PDO, AMO, how about climate cycles.
You did’t answer my question, how much time have we got?
Sigh… here read this seamutt, it explains why there the difference between eastern and western canada’s weather. Global warming is warming the Pacific Ocean, which is affecting weather in western Canada.
http: //news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/tired-of-bizarre-weather-blame-the-north-pacific-mode
Awww heart guy Ops. Hart guy. Did you get your poor little feelings hurt? I thought you had skin of an elephant. What are you going to do with all those unionized firefighters in town. Burn your house down?
Its Frickin SUMMER!!!
Sigh
Sage in that article did you read this “be more inclined to think global warming was responsible for a more permanent shift in weather.” No proof just thinking, typical from the rent seekers. Oh by the way there has been no statistically significant warming for almost twenty years now as shown by satellite readings, the most accurate, so how can our summer be blamed on global warming? If you check, the arctic ice is doing just fine, the prediction was for no ice summer of 2014, didn’t happen so the goal posts got moved again, then again, then again.
On that map you pointed to, did you notice the blue blobs, or don’t they count?
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