Prince George, B.C. – Typically, a fire season in B.C.  wraps up in early September,  but BC Wildfire Service Chief Fire information Officer Kevin Skrepnek, says  there is no prediction on when the 2017 season will wrap up.

“It has been unprecedented in many ways”  says Skrepnek,  who notes  as of today  $404 million dollars have been spent on  fire suppression,  the number of hectares burned (1,061,618),  the  number of folks  forced from their homes (at peak just under 45 thousand).

Even though a number of evacuation orders have been  rescinded,  there are still just over 25 hundred on evacuation order another 11 thousand on evacuation alert.

As for when this unprecedented season will at least  wind down,  Skrepnek says  it’s “at the whim of the weather”.  The forecast  calls for more hot dry conditions in the southern interior over the next week, with no significant rain event “If that kind of trend is going to continue, we have to brace ourselves to stretch into the fall.”

Even if there was a major change in the weather, Skrepnek says there  is still a lot of work to do  “Even if we get a good amount of rain across the southern half of the province, there is still a tremendous amount of work to do , getting these fires fully mopped  up and extinguished.  I expect our firefighters are going to be out there  working well into the fall.”