My home province is on fire....

**DanieMarie** · 07 Jul 2015 06:24

Hey everyone,

Due to the drought conditions and higher than average heat levels in British Columbia, there are wildfires spreading all over the province. Several are burning in Vancouver Island where I grew up. So far, my hometown is safe from fire, but people in places like Port Hardy are being evacuated from their homes. In Vancouver and most of Vancouver Island, the air quality levels are deemed "unsafe" due to all of the smoke. We've never seen anything like this, and all I can do is watch from horror from halfway across the world as the forests that I love burn.

Here are a few articles on the issue:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/britis...them-1.3140106
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/britis...says-1.3140756
http://globalnews.ca/news/2093016/mu...row-overnight/
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/britis...ency-1.3138558

And here is the latest fire info:
http://bcwildfire.ca/hprScripts/Wild...CentrePage.asp

Our forests are our cultural heritage. They are extremely important to the First Nations people from the province, and also to the rest of us who grew up hiking, camping, and enjoying BC's spectacular landscape. Can everyone send a thought or a prayer to British Columbia? To the people dealing with fire and smoke, to the poor animals who are losing their habitats, and to the majestic cedars and douglas firs that are ablaze (trees that can live for thousands of years). They need rain, and they need the emergency wildfire fighting services to be effective.

**volcaniclastic** · 07 Jul 2015 06:48

And so is the NWT, for a second year in a row.

**Gleb** · 07 Jul 2015 06:53

There was a similar thing in the north of Israel a couple of years ago. Sending prayers.

**anunitu** · 07 Jul 2015 07:03

I was surprised at the fires,I do not think I ever saw news about Canada and forest fires. The west coast of the US yeh,California in general and now more with the drought.

It never occurred to me that Canada would have them because of being so cold. Sorry you guys are having a hard time with the fires..

Are most of the fires caused by Lightning?,or is it human factors..?

**DanieMarie** · 07 Jul 2015 07:21

It's not cold. It can reach 100 degrees or more in South-Central British Columbia. The coast is cooler than the interior in the summer, but no cooler than the Washington State coast. The prairie provinces can also be stifling hot.

Canada is often a country of extremes. Extreme winters, but also extreme summers.

This year is hotter than average, though. Part of the problem on the coast was also snow and rainfall. In the winter and spring, it's supposed to rain a LOT at sea level on the coast. Like, all the stereotypes about the US northwest are true for Vancouver and Vancouver Island. It's a wet place. In the mountains, it's supposed to snow all winter. This year, it barely snowed on the mountains and rainfall was low on the coast. In the spring, it barely rained at all on the coast. So it's dry as hell. Because it's hotter than average, it just started burning

Most were caused by lightening from what I've read. But there are a lot of them, so who knows? I think most people have been pretty good about respecting the campfire and smoking bans. No one wants to see it get worse.

V, I'm sorry to hear that NWT is suffering from fires as well. You guys are in my thoughts and prayers as well.

I also heard there were a lot of fires in Saskatchewan: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskat...uees-1.3139554

I looked up Alberta and they're hit too. I guess it's the entire west.

If you scroll down on this article, you can see the average rainfall figures compared with the actual ones. It's pretty dry:
http://www.theweathernetwork.com/new...a-burns/53793/