A BC Wildfire Service official says wildfires the Prince George Fire Centre in 2023 and 2024 burned 10 per cent of the land base, which is more than what was burned in the previous 60 years combined. 

Neal McLoughlin, predictive services superintendent with BC Wildfire, said last week the province has had record-setting wildfire seasons both this year and last, but a huge proportion of the areas burned are in B.C.'s northeast corner. 

That's the Prince George Fire Centre.

B.C. has six fire centres, and Prince George is by far the largest at 33.6 million hectares. A large forest region of the province, it is an area 10 times the size of Vancouver Island. 

"Seventy-five per cent of the total area burned in 2024 was due to fire in Prince George (Fire Centre), and last year was higher at 80 per cent."

As of Sept. 18, more than 1.05 million hectares burned in 2024. In 2023, 2.84 million hectares burned in B.C.

"If we subtracted away our Prince George Fire Centre and just looked at the rest of the province, it is fairly, actually normal in terms of area burned and (fire) activity."

McLoughlin said it highlights the magnitude of the last two fire seasons.

"We've burned slightly more in the last two years than we've burned in the past 60. This is a pretty significant fire load and area burned for our boreal communities."

But he said if you were to further zoom into the areas around Fort St. John, Fort Nelson and Northwest Territories border region, the area burned in the last two years is actually closer to 40 to 50 per cent of the land base.

"I just wanted to recognized that for communities and people in the north you really have had to deal with a lot of smoke, evacuation notices or orders and fire has just been present pretty much every day for you throughout the last two seasons and and we recognize the struggles that that causes."

McLoughlin said many of the 2024 wildfires in the northeast started as holdover fires – fires started in 2023 – and "continued to burn deep ... and resurfaced in the spring of 2024."

He added that low snow pack, an early spring and warm temperatures "really set us up for high drought codes and the likelihood or good conditions for holdover fires to pick up again and continue burning."

"If we receive normal precipitation this winter, that would put us into the green colour, kind of a moderate drought code, but still relatively high for the boreal," he said.

"Obviously it wouldn't eliminate the likelihood of a holdover, but it would diminish, perhaps the extent of the holdover activity we could see in 2025."