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Around 40,000 lightning strikes and over 200 new fires in B.C. in the past two days

‘We’re expecting that the worst of the lightning is now over’
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Fire seen yesterday near Kamloops. BC Wildfire Service photo.

Yesterday saw over 20,000 lightning strikes, adding to the 19,000 strikes from the day prior with both days seeing over 100 wildfires start in B.C., according to Chief Fire Information Officer Kevin Skrepnek.

“Another busy day. Definitely keeping our crews on the hop out there, but again nothing of huge concern.”

Among the more significant was a 60-hectare grass/bush interface fire in Kamloops that briefly caused some tactical evacuations of about a dozen homes.

RELATED: Possibly lightning-caused fire burns within metres of homes in Kamloops

“We’ve definitely been making good progress and we’re expecting that the worst of the lightning is now over. There’s certainly still going to be a risk for some areas over the next few days but we don’t expect to see numbers like that again for the foreseeable future.”

The largest fire in the province is a 1,200-hectare fire near Kloch Lake about 200 km northwest of Prince George. There are a handful in the Northwest Fire Centre that are around 30, 50 and 100 hectares and in the Prince George Fire Centre near Fort Nelson at about 300 hectares.

“For the most part though, I think, as evidenced by the fact that we still don’t have any really significant fires on the go right now, in terms of evacuation alerts or orders or threatening communities, the situation is still pretty well in hand,” he says. “Obviously, we still have a lot of fire on the landscape that we have to deal with.”


newsroom@100milefreepress.net

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