The BC wildfire situation has cooled down from last week

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VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – Rain over the weekend and today has helped bring the number of wildfires burning across the province down to 145.

Chief Information Officer Kevin Skrepnek says weekend thunderstorms carried enough rain to cancel out potential problems he feared on Friday.

“Given the amount of lightning that we took, last week we were bracing for a fairly busy weekend… in terms of the potential for new fires but also for some of those existing fires to flare up.”

The winds didn’t end up being as aggressive as was forecast.

Skrepek says the past couple days have been much quieter than last week, when crews had to battle more than 200 fires.

“There are still no fires of major concern out there. We do have a few fires of note in the central part of the province… nothing at this point that are considered interface fires, threatening communities or structures,” he explains.

“Looking ahead to the next week, we don’t have any major concerns with the weather right now. It’s looking fairly seasonal,” he adds.

Of the 145 active fires, only 14 are new.

So far this year, 560 fires have burned less than 45,000 hectares.

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