Fire Season To Be Reviewed

The BC government will be using this year’s record wildfire season to learn what can be done better in future years.

Forests Minister Doug Donaldson says a record amount of land has been burned this year by the more than 12-hundred fires.

“We’ll be doing a thorough review from within my ministry of how we fought these fires, what the best practices were, and what can be improved,” says Donaldson.

Pictured: Doug Donaldson, BC Forests Minister

Donaldson says less work was done to remove wildfire fuels due to a lack of resources from the previous Liberal government.

“We’ll be determining if that actually had an impact on the severity of the fires this season, and we’ll be taking that into the future.”

With the fire threat easing, the province will be ending the nine week old provincial state of emergency later today.

“Conditions and circumstances have warranted the lifting of the province-wide state of emergency, yet we still have certain areas and regions that are facing volatile situations,” says Donaldson.

Robert Turner from Emergency Management BC says there are over 3,000 people in the province still on evacuation order, and about 4,500 on alert.