Despite Cool Wet Weather, New Fires Reported
Prince George, B.C.- There has been some progress in the battle with wildfires in B.C.
There are 166 fires burning in the province, down from 175 noted yesterday, but 12 of the 166, started yesterday. Of those 12 new fires, 9 were caused by lightning.
The cost of fire suppression yesterday alone was $2.7 million dollars says Wildfire Management Branch Chief Fire Information Officer Kevin Skrepnek.
There have been 1104 fires since April, with more than 293 thousand hectares burned and the costs to date are now $122 million dollars..
In comparison with last year, during the same time period there had been 583 fires burning 103 thousand hectares burned.
The weather has been cool and wet in much of the province, but Skrepnek says a return to the hot dry weather is expected through the weekend.
But there are still some thunderstorms to get through before the hot dry conditions return. “This is typically the time when we start to see our core season of lightning activity in the province and we had seen an unseasonably high amount of lightning early in the season” says Skrepnek. ” We are continuing to see lightning fires” says Skrepnek, including 9 of the 12 new fire starts from yesterday “Those might not necessarily be the result of lightning occurring in real time, many of these were likely hold over fires, the result of lightning that came through days or even weeks ago starting a small fire that wasn’t really detectable at the time, then once conditions in the area got hot and dry, or if there was enough wind, those fires flared up.”
There remain 17 fires of note in the province with five continuing to have evacuation orders or alerts in place.
The Martin Mars ran a practice run this week, doing three practice drops, but has not been deployed for actual duty.
There are now more than 2200 personnel working on the fires.
Comments
So let’s follow this linear piece of logic: Forest fire numbers, frequency, and intensity are increasing because of the early hot and dry weather, and earlier lightening activity. All of these weather related condition have been linked to global warming by climate scientists and agencies. The primary cause of global warming is our use of fossil fuels. Our federal government subsidizes the fossil fuel industry in Canada to the tune of $34 BILLION dollars to extract more fossil fuels for us to use, to increase the rate of global warming, which results in even more wildfires.
So in a sense, our government is subsidizing $34 BILLION dollars towards the promotion of more forest fires. I have an idea; how about our government stop subsidizing the oil industry and start subsidizing an alternative energy industry? And perhaps put a measly $1 billion of those $34 Billion dollars towards fighting forest fires while they are at it?
Sophic Sage,
A much better way to look at it is the fact that we have taken natural fires out of the picture leading to a 600% increase in pine over the age of 80 from 1935 to 2000 when the first aerial photographs were taken.
This tinkering with mother nature has a much greater impact than any carbon emissions. Remembering that in the Holocene optimum about 8000 years ago the temperatures were much warmer, as evidenced by lake bed (benthic) drills that show Douglas Fir growing much further north.
There is little to be done to prevent fires as they are 75% caused by lightning and dominant species like Douglas Fir and Lodgepole pine are perfectly adapted to constant burning. These fires are very good for biodiversity and are a naturally occuring antidote to mono cultures of old unhealthy coniferous forest.
As susbsidies of 34 Billion essentially reduces the cost of oil, which we all use, whether a school bus, a warm hospital waiting room, or an amblulance ride I am not sure if that truly qualifies as a subsidy.
Lots of room to argue about subsidies, no room to argue that fire prevention is extremely unnatural and has myriads of negative consequences.
I think it is time the major fossil fuel companies started paying for the damage their products are causing to our environment. I say this with the caveat that this should also apply to increased costs associated with global warming, as it is their products that are causing global warming and increasing our costs to mitigate the damage.
We lost billions of dollars of wood fiber to the mountain pine beetle, an epidemic that has been directly linked to climate change, should not the fossil fuel industry, who products are responsible for global warming contribute to some of those costs? This same convention of thinking should also apply to the increased costs of fighting wildfires, it’s time we started making the industry that is responsible for the increase in forest fires PAY!!! What do you think Enbridge?
http: //wcel.org/resources/environmental-law-alert/should-chevron-pay-mountain-pine-beetle-epidemic
Copy and paste the link to your address bar, then delete the space between the http: and the /
So Sage you deny there was climate change before Mann. How’s your electric car?
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