B.C. saw same number of fires, much less land burned in 2022 season, wildfire service says

The 2022 wildfire season is not yet over, but it's been winding down, according to the B.C. Wildfire Service's final status update of the year. 

Issued Friday, the update notes that there are currently 166 wildfires burning in the province, with 82 per cent of those classified as "being held" or "under control."

"Over the last week, there were 24 new fire starts and three fires started in the last 24 hours," the BCWS said in the update, adding that the majority of those fires were held under one hectare.

"Though a downturn in activity has been observed, there is still no season ending weather in the forecast as conditions remain dry with above seasonal temperatures throughout most of the province," the service continued.

Compared to the devastating 2021 season, 2022 has been a down year for wildfires. The season started slowly with cooler-than-average weather and above-average precipitation in June. 

Despite the slow start, there had been a total of 1,577 fires sparked in the province in 2022 as of Friday. That's only slightly lower than the 1,610 fires seen in 2021, according to the BCWS.

On average, over the last 10 years, there have been 1,403 wildfires per year in B.C.

Though there were nearly as many of them, this year's fires burned a much smaller land area than 2021's did. So far in 2022, 109,104 hectares – or about 1,091 square kilometres – have burned. In 2021, the total was 868,204 hectares, or about 8,682 square kilometres.

B.C.'s 10-year average is 433,186 hectares (roughly 4,332 square kilometres) of wildfire damage per year.

As of last week, there are no longer any wildfires of note in B.C. The last one – the Battleship Mountain wildfire, which caused the evacuation of the entire district of Hudson's Hope earlier this month – was classified as "being held" and removed from the list on Sept. 24.