Prince George, B.C. – Officials with the B.C. Wildfire Service are hoping weather conditions will be in their favour in keeping the lid on fire outbreaks in the province this holiday long weekend.

The Environment Canada weekend forecast for the Prince George area shows a drying trend and warmer temperatures, with sun, cloud, slight chance of showers and a high of 16 today, sunny and 18 Sunday and sunny and 23 on Monday.

Fire Information Officer Claire Allen says “with the changing conditions generally its regionally pretty variant, so hoping for lots of precipitation up north especially where we’re fighting as lot of those big fires in the Peace region.  But how much precipitation remains to be seen and how much is rain and how much is snow again remains to be seen, and conditions are changing a lot.”

“In terms of that, the Northwest Fire Centre has put out an information bulletin about fire safety because they’re having a lot of dry conditions and sun right now.  In Kamloops and through the southeast and into the Kootenays there’s lots of precipitation, all along the south from the lower mainland all the way to the Rockies.  But again, there’s lots of dry patches.”

“With that, luckily our forecasters have predicted there’s a low incidence of lightning which is great news for natural starts as fire causes.  However with the long weekend we have advised all British Columbians to abide by the open fire  prohibitions that are in place within the different regional fire centres.  As well as where they are not in place making sure that campfires stay within a half metre by a half metre and that they have water or a shovel on hand and to make sure that campfires are always attended.”

Allen says there are currently 64 fires burning within the province.  Of those 41 are human-caused, 4 are lightning-caused and the remaining 19 are still under investigation.

“As far as the fire danger rating is concerned,” she says “we’ve got pockets of high up in the northwest and moderate throughout a lot of the north and west of the province, and the danger rating drops as you get more into the southeast.”

As far as the Peace region fires go Allen says “in terms of the big ones you’ve got three fires of note: the Beatton Airport Road, Siphon Creek and the Halfway River fires.  Of those we’ve had a lot of great success in terms of building our containment lines and the fires aren’t growing at this time, but they still are challenging and we’re hoping for lots of precipitation to help combat those over the weekend.”

Allen reminds everyone that “over the weekend they can call toll-free 1-800-663-5555 or on their cell phone they can dial *5555 to report any wildfire activity that they see.