The manager of the B.C. Wildfire Branch's Prince George Fire Centre is thanking the weather for a relatively quiet forest fire season in the local area.
Other than the Bobtail Lake blaze, which covered 25,000 hectares west of the city, there was little if anything to report. That's in sharp contrast to last year when smoke from nearby forest fires darkened the sky so much that street lights stayed on well into the morning.
"Just weather," was Les Husband's response when asked what the difference was.
Crews were busy elsewhere in the Prince George Fire Centre, which stretches up into the Yukon border in the Peace-Liard.
"Where we got busy was up in the northeast and in Fort Nelson, Fort St. John areas," Husband said. "We had some extremely large fires up there and a lot of fires that typically, in that country, we don't get. They'll be there until the snow flies, some are large enough."
The wildfire season at least locally looks to be effectively over, Husband said, thanks to recent wetter weather combined with the cooling trend.
"Our area of concern is always up in the Peace where we've got so much agricultural area and the grass," Husband said. "We'll probably get some fall grass fires, that's fairly typical but outside of that I think the hazard for the majority of our fire centre is pretty low."
Campers heading out for the long weekend are still being urged to be cautious, particularly if they're heading south. And campfires remain banned west of the Fraser River in the Cariboo Fire Centre.
Officials there are also asking for the public's help to track down those responsible for a wildfire discovered Sunday, Aug. 30 at the Suey Bay Recreation Site on Horsefly Lake.
Thanks to reports from the public, crews were able to respond quickly and contained the fire at1.5 hectares. But it remains under investigation and anyone who may have seen any suspicious activity at the site is asked to call Crime Stoppers anonymously at 1-800-222-8477 or submit a web tip at www.bccrimestoppers.com
Tips for a safe campfire include keeping a shovel or at least eight litres of water available nearby to properly extinguish your campfire, limiting its size to no more than a half-metre wide by a half-metre high, keeping a one-metre fireguard around the campfire and refraining from lighting a campfire in windy conditions.
