Burned log buried under the snow

By Sam Bennison

Wildfire

Over a million hectares was burnt by wildfires mostly in the Prince George Fire Centre

Jan 8, 2025 | 5:26 PM

PRINCE GEORGE— The 2024 wildfire season burned 1,081,136 hectares of land in B.C. While not as bad as 2023 a substantial amount of our forests still went up in smoke.

The Prince George fire Centre only covers a third of the entire province but the ongoing drought conditions has caused the region to take the brunt of the burned land. 75 per cent or 810,876 of the total land burned in 2024 occurred in the PG Fire Centre.

There are still 27 wildfires burning even in the winter. Sharon Nickel a fire information officer explains that these fires are buried underneath the snow and ice most likely using the root system as fuel. When the ground starts to thaw the Wildfire service will be monitoring the province for any smoke.

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“When holdover fires do resurface, it’s usually like a smaller part of the perimeter.” explains Nickel. “That’s where we’ll we’ll focus like our early season efforts.”

When it comes to what’s in store for the 2025 fire season. It all depends on our snowpack and the amount of precipitation we get from now to june.

“If we kind of have a lot of sublimation of snow, we’re not going to get that penetrating the ground. If that’s the case. And it’s drier over the winter we start the spring drier,” says Nickel. “And then, we do like to really hold off on saying what kind of season we’re going to have until we kind of get through May and June and get those early spring rains.”

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Email: sam.bennison@pattisonmedia.com