Hundreds of firefighters and dozens of aircraft are working to contain the largest wildfire ever recorded in British Columbia’s history.
Nineteen wildfires have merged in the province’s Interior, creating a single blaze that’s estimated to be more than 467,000 hectares in size, according to fire information officer Kevin Skrepnek with the B.C. Wildfire Service.
The massive Plateau fire, which stretches 130 kilometres from one end to the other, is located on the Chilcotin Plateau, 60 kilometres west of Quesnel and 60 kilometres northwest of Williams Lake.
Google Maps: Williams Lake, B.C.
It was created by the merging of the Chezacut, Tautri, Bishop’s Bluff, Baezaeko, Wentworth Creek, Arc Mountain, and other wildfires. The first of those was discovered on July 7 and the cause is listed as “under investigation.”
The fire is now so big the wildfire management branch has set up two incident command teams to co-ordinate the firefighting efforts of more than 400 firefighters, 25 helicopters and dozens of pieces of heavy equipment
Previously, the biggest wildfire in B.C. history was a 220,000 hectare blaze that burned in the northeastern part of the province in 1958.
Slow progress despite efforts
Skrepnek says crews are making good progress on the fire, but because of its size, it’s expected to continue burning for weeks.
“Just given the sheer scale of this fire, you know it is going to be active for some time to come and it’s going to be quite some time before we would be even close to calling it contented or calling it under control.”
There are no major communities affected by the blaze but several smaller rural communities in the Cariboo region are under evacuation orders.
There have been 1,031 fires in the province since April 1, burning over 900,000 hectares of land, and making 2017 the worst wildfire season on record. The previous record was set in 1958, when 855,000 hectares burned.
Last week the B.C. government extended the state of emergency covering the entire province until Sept. 1.