By the second week of June, the BC Wildfire Service had already logged more than 340 fires across the province — a number that, in most years, wouldn't be reached until mid-July. The provincial government declared a state of emergency on June 9th, the earliest such declaration in the province's recorded history.
Fire behaviour analysts say the conditions this spring created a perfect setup for early ignitions: a snowpack that was 40% below normal in the southern interior, followed by two weeks of temperatures that ran 6 to 8 degrees above the seasonal average. The grass and brush that would normally still be green and damp in early June were already tinder-dry.
Communities on evacuation alert
As of this writing, approximately 12,000 residents in the Okanagan and Cariboo regions are under evacuation orders or alerts. Several small communities near Kamloops have been fully evacuated. The fires burning near the town of Merritt are being described by officials as "highly unpredictable" due to shifting winds.
For many residents, this is not their first evacuation. The Lytton fire of 2021, which destroyed most of that town in a matter of hours, remains a reference point for how quickly conditions can turn catastrophic. "We know what can happen," said one Merritt resident who asked not to be identified. "You don't wait around to see if it gets better."
The climate context
Scientists have been warning for years that climate change would extend and intensify BC's fire season. The data from the past decade bears that out: the five worst fire years on record in the province have all occurred since 2017. But the speed of this year's escalation has surprised even researchers who study fire ecology.
"We knew the trend was going in this direction," said a fire ecologist at UBC who has studied BC's fire history for two decades. "The pace of change is still striking, even when you're expecting it."
The federal government has pledged additional resources, including military personnel to assist with evacuations and aerial firefighting assets. Whether those resources will be sufficient depends on how the next several weeks unfold — and on weather patterns that remain difficult to predict.