Almost 500,000 hectares burned in the Kamloops Fire Centre this year, worst on record

The Kamloops Fire Centre is coming out of the worst fire season on record.

A total of 442 wildfires have erupted in the region since April 1, burning 496,983 hectares of land in the region covering the Thompson-Okanagan, Upper Fraser Canyon and Shuswap regions.

In terms of hectares burned, 2021 broke the record by a wide margin.

Fire Centre Fire Information Officer Taylor MacDonald said the second-worst season was 2017, when 209,320 hectares burned. Third-worst was 2018, when 51,559 hectares burned.

In 2017 there were 243 wildfires and in 2018 there were 423.

The Sparks Lake wildfire in Kamloops was the largest fire in the province and burned over 90,000 hectares, following closely behind is the White Rock Lake wildfire between Vernon and Kamloops at 83,342 hectares.

The South Okanagan also had its fair share of fire this season with the Nk’Mip fire burning over 20,000 hectares.

B.C. received wildfire support from Mexico and crews from out of province, as well as help from the Canadian Armed Forces.

With the ongoing pandemic and the need for fire crews around the province, getting enough resources became a challenge, said fire information officer Taylor Coleman.

She said other provinces like Alberta, Ontario and the Prairies also had severe wildfire seasons and so “all the provinces were vying for resources,” said Coleman.

The drought in the Thompson-Okanagan severely impacted the intensity of the wildfire season and the several heat waves that hit the region worsened the situation.

“Things were already dry going into the summer and then at the end of June we saw the historic heat wave, followed by record-breaking temperatures after that,” says Coleman.

“The fuels were really susceptible to ignitions and then we had multiple lightning events move through the province back to back all throughout the first half of July.”

Coleman added that the province was seeing about 45 new fires starting per day for the first two weeks of July.

“That’s a ton of wildfire on the landscape and it’s not just sort of centralized in one area, definitely the Kamloops Fire Centre was hit the hardest but it was experienced all throughout the province, it was really widespread,” says Coleman.

At this time, the only remaining "fire of note" in the Kamloops Fire Centre is the White Rock Lake wildfire, which is classified as being held.