CBC
Published on Jun. 18, 2023
The Donnie Creek wildfire in northeastern British Columbia has now surpassed the 2017 Plateau fire as the largest individual fire, by area burned, ever recorded in the province's history.
It was sparked on May 12 by lightning, according to the B.C. Wildfire Service (BCWS), and covers an area of 5,343.88 square kilometres as of 10 a.m. PT on Sunday. It is still not responding to suppression efforts and remains out of control, according to the BCWS.
Before this year — which has seen an unusually early start to fire season — the largest single fire was the 2017 Plateau fire near Williams Lake, an amalgamation of several smaller fires that burned a total of 5,210 square kilometres.
The wildfire is burning 136 kilometres southeast of Fort Nelson, and 158 kilometres north of Fort St. John, in the province's Peace River region.
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BCWS fire information officer Marg Drysdale said the blaze was "extremely active" on Sunday and that in some pockets, the fire was so aggressive it was burning the tops of trees — what is called "Crown fire" behaviour.
"We have cooler conditions today," she said on Sunday morning. "But this fire is so large that there's different weather patterns and different weather conditions on different parts of the fire."
Drysdale said that if the 948-kilometre-long perimeter of the fire was stretched out, it would go from Fort St. John in northeast B.C. all the way to Kamloops in the Central Interior.
While the blaze isn't burning near major population centres, it has resulted in evacuation orders for a sparsely populated region primarily used by the forestry and oil and gas industries.
It was burning two kilometres away from the critical Alaska Highway route at a point north of Trutch, B.C. Evacuation orders and alerts are in place for a 160-kilometre stretch of the road.
"Our objectives are to protect and keep the Alaska Highway open because we understand what an important corridor that is for many people," Drysdale said.
Crews conducted planned ignitions around the perimeter of the fire, near the highway, on Friday. The BCWS says the fire perimeter is currently holding at that spot, but warmer weather conditions are expected to return on Thursday.
Drought, high temperatures are factors in fire size
The Donnie Creek blaze is not as large as the 2018 Tweedsmuir complex of fires, nor the 2017 Hanceville-Riske Creek complex, which burned 3,015 and 2,412 square kilometres, respectively. However, wildfire officials say because those complexes consisted of multiple fires burning in separate but nearby areas, they are not considered a single blaze.
The Plateau fire complex in 2017, which also consisted of nearby fires, burned an area of 5,451 square kilometres.
The Donnie Creek fire now covers an area 1.8 times the size of Metro Vancouver. Drysdale said the Peace region began early May facing drought conditions, and there hasn't been the precipitation that would have helped ward off large fire starts in the spring.
"The fire started in May, which is during what we call spring dip. So, the area hadn't greened up and vegetation hadn't accepted the moisture that it normally does," she said.
"We saw 30 degree temperatures in the spring. And we've had high and continuous winds throughout."
More than 80 fires are burning across B.C. as of 12 p.m. PT on Sunday, and 25 of them are considered out of control.
Thumbnail courtesy of B.C. Wildfire via CBC.
The story was written by Akshay Kulkarni and origially published for CBC News
Visit The Weather Network's wildfire hub to keep up with the latest on the active start to wildfire season across Canada.
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