Independent review will examine B-C’s 2017 wildfire season. Credit: BC Wildfire Service
Provincial fire information officer Ryan Turcot says an independent review will examine B-C’s disastrous 2017 wildfire season.
He expects the review will be similar to the probe conducted by former Manitoba premier Gary Filmon following devastating wildfires in 2003.
That year saw hundreds of homes destroyed in Kelowna and north of Kamloops.
Turcot says the 2017 wildfires were “unprecedented” and B-C Wildfire Service staff will spend much of the winter looking at how things went and how planning and responses can improve for 2018.
On Vancouver Island, two new fires have been reported by the BC Wildfire Service, including a 20-hectare blaze at Tsitika Mainline east of Woss.
The other fire is 0.01 hectares located southeast of Lower Tsitika River Provincial Park.
Turcot says costs of the recent wildfires include 561-million dollars in suppression costs, more than 12-thousand square kilometres of woodland charred and over 65-thousand people displaced between early July and late September.
With files from the Canadian Press.
Andy Neal
