Prince George, B.C.- Minister of Forests and Range, Pat Bell, says he is getting very concerned about the upcoming fire season.

“As everyone across this province knows, we’ve had record low snow falls, very early  season drying trends and that has given us a great deal of concern.” Minister Bell says the air tanker fleet is on 48 hour notice at this point, something which isn’t normally done until the first of may, “But if we see a significant drying trends and a high risk of   fire, we’ll be bringing those crews one. We’ve also looked to bring some of our other crews on early and are doing that actually right now across the Province.”

The higher elevation snow packs are still normal, the lower to mid elevation snow packs are very low and that says Bell is an issue that cannot be mitigated. “We’re going to look at taking a variety of actions early on. We’ve already had three interface fires in the Kamloops fire zone down into the Okanagan area. Those were largely caused by people burning off their grass and it got away from them. So a very strong message across the Province at this point is please, be very careful with your fire activity. Don’t just assume that just because you’ve always done something that it’s acceptable. We are in extremely dry conditions already and we need to be very cautious about that.”