\u2018Significant\u2019 wildfire events likely in B.C. later this week: officials<\/p>\n
Published 1:00 pm Tuesday, July 14, 2026<\/p>\n
B.C. wildfire officials presented a grim forecast on Tuesday (July 14).<\/p>\n
Despite the province experiencing a relatively light wildfire season so far, extremely dry forest fuels and a high likelihood of lightning without rain mean fresh fires are expected in the coming days.<\/p>\n
Dry lightning and wind are forecast across most of B.C. starting Wednesday afternoon and are expected to continue into Thursday and Friday. Southern parts of the province will see the highest risk.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is absolutely the time to be diligent in this province,\u201d said Cliff Chapman, BC Wildfire Service\u2019s operations director. \u201cWe are potentially going to be dealing with a significant wildfire event in the next 24 hours.\u201d<\/p>\n
BC Wildfire personnel are on alert and \u201cready to respond,\u201d he said, with aviation and other resources deployed in other parts of Canada through interagency cooperation agreements on the way home to help.<\/p>\n
Lightning is most likely in the central, south-central, southeastern and northeastern parts of the province. The situation is the most dire in south-central B.C., where conditions are the driest.<\/p>\n
These areas have the highest potential for \u201cexplosive fire behaviour,\u201d Chapman said.<\/p>\n
He added that there are also pockets elsewhere in the province where a fire can start and spread. This includes the north, but he notes that recent lightning events in that region did not spark fires.<\/p>\n
A big factor at this point will be how dry forest fuels are. In parts of the Okanagan, the forest is as \u201cdry as it can be.\u201d And stream flows in some areas of the Okanagan and Vancouver Island are at the 10th percentile of normal, or lower.<\/p>\n
This all means the forest is highly susceptible to wildfires, and to rapid spread.<\/p>\n
So far this season, approximately 440 fires have burned roughly 25,000 hectares. This includes 23 active wildfires.<\/p>\n
Despite the dry weather \u2014 and a couple of significant fires<\/a> in the Fraser Canyon \u2014 the season has not been nearly as bad as the past few years. By this time last year, more than 700,000 hectares had burned from 544 fires. In 2023, the worst season on record, 1.2 million hectares had burned by mid-July from more than 1,000 fires.<\/p>\n While weather is the main reason for the less severe fire season, Forests Minister Ravi Parmar also credits public wildfire reports and the BC Wildfire Service\u2019s firefighting efforts with helping to get fires under control more quickly.<\/p>\n Chapman says another factor is fewer \u201choldover\u201d fires from previous years. These fires smoulder underground through winter and reignite once the snow melts. This caused a real uptick in early-season fires for the last few years, but is much less of a factor this season.<\/p>\n With declining stream flows and continued dry conditions ahead, the province is asking people, particularly in the Lower Mainland, Southern Interior and on Vancouver Island, to conserve water.<\/p>\n Burn bans are also being implemented. The latest restrictions can be found here<\/a>. Parmar said that as of Thursday at noon, campfire bans will be added<\/a> in most of the Coastal Fire Centre as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u2018Significant\u2019 wildfire events likely in B.C. later this week: officials Published 1:00 pm Tuesday, July 14, 2026 B.C.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":803887,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194299],"tags":[903,49,48,87674],"class_list":["post-803886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-surrey","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-surrey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=803886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803886\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/803887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=803886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=803886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=803886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}