Prince George, B.C. – The largest wildfire in the Prince George Fire Centre is now 100 per cent contained.

The 71 hectare Darby Lake wildfire – which started last Wednesday (cause under investigation) and is located four kilometres northwest of Eskers Provincial Park – is now in the patrol stage after receiving significant rainfall over the weekend.

Fire information officer Amanda Reynolds says it continues to be a slow start to the year.

“Since April 1, the Prince George Fire Centre has had 51 fires burning only 757 hectares,” she says. “And this is drastically lower than 2016, where at this time we had 140 fires that had burned over 90,000 hectares.”

She says it’s mostly thanks to mother nature.

“I think weather plays a huge part in wildfire activity. We’ve had a lot of precipitation and cooler temperatures in between some warmer and hotter times. We also appreciate people have been registering their burns.”

(Anyone conducting a Category 3 open burn must have a burn registration number. A Category 3 burn is defined as a burn that burns material at the same time in three or more piles each not exceeding two metres in height and three metres in width.)

Looking ahead, Reynolds says things are looking typical for this time of year.

“We’re in our usual June weather where we have a trend of rain, a drying period, then back to rain.”