BC Wildfires

One part of living in British Columbia that has become commonplace is the wildfires that occur every summer. Nowadays, I expect to see smoke on the horizon or even above Vancouver for part or even most of the summer, and I expect to hear of dangerous fires threatening communities on Vancouver Island and in the interior. The first year I remember this happening was 2015, when I returned from my exchange to Norway. I had heard that the fires were bad, but when I arrived in BC I saw smoke filling the sky and there was an orange glow everywhere. People were calling it apocalyptic. Another year, my cousin had to evacuate from Fort St. John due to a fire that was threatening the town, and she had to move back to the Nanaimo area for a while. The fire that I remember off the top of my head from this year was near Port Alberni, a place I have driven through many times throughout my life.

Left: an almost apocalyptic Vancouver due to smoke from nearby fires. Right: the Mount Underwood fire that threatened Port Alberni this year and knocked out power for many communities on the west side of Vancouver Island, including Bamfield, for 11 days.

As a kid, the main reason I would be heading through that area was to go to Sprout Lake to stay with my friend. While I can remember multiple Port Alberni fires from the last few years, I can't remember that every being an issue when I was younger. This got me thinking about how wildfires seemed to be a much more manageable when I was a kid than they are now, but I was wondering if I just had less access or interest in wildfire news then, or if wildfires really have gotten worse. The map below shows wildfire areas in BC from the year I was born until 2024, with more recent fires shown in warmer colours like red, orange, and yellow, and fires from longer ago in cooler colours like blue.

Looking at this map, I notice that almost all of the colours I can see are warmer, meaning that most of the fires are from recent years. In particular, I see the huge red fire in the northeast corner and the huge orange one in gentral BC. This indicates that my perception is true: bigger fires are becoming more common over time. However, there are also many small fires that are very hard to see, and it's hard to tell when those fires happened.

To look at changes in overall fire count and cumulative fire size over my lifetime, I made a filled area chart with wildfire count by year on top and cumulative wildfire size on the bottom.

This chart clearly shows the increase over time. While peak years in terms of fire count (such as 2009, 2018, and 2023) are mostly consistent, the average nuimber of fires appears to be increasing. Even more salient is the increase in cumulative wildfire size, with larger amounts in 2017, 2018, and 2021 and a huge spike in 2023.

Two aircraft used to carry water to put out fires. Left: the Martin JRM Mars water bomber that I grew up seeing when I visited my friends at Sproat Lake, where it was based. It operated for over 50 years. Right: a helicopter deploying water from a water bucket.

So, it seems that fires are becoming more of a problem in BC, which lines up with my reflections. It also aligns with climate change models that show changing temperatures and more erratic weather. Obviously, local news has reported on this topic too, but I rarely see these kinds of charts, especially the geographic map showing fire perimeters with when they happened. I will also note that the data could be missing fires or otherwise be inaccurate, but I downloaded it from the BC government website so it's likely the most accurate data that's available to the public.