British Columbia has experienced a lot of wildfires this year and it has been an expensive proposition trying to extinguish the blazes that have hit every region of the province.
We had an early and extremely difficult start to the fire season.
It is due to the hot, dry conditions of our forested land, and the forest floor has continued to get drier and drier – a trend likely to continue into September.
As of Aug. 10, there have been 1,460 fires this season, which have burned 283,500 hectare of forests.
Most of the wildfires are started when thunder and lightning storms roll across the province.
Often the storms are not accompanied by rain, and the lightning strikes spark up fires that can grow very quickly.
The BC Wildfire Service tracks the lightning strikes and conducts air patrols to ensure hotspots don't flare up a few days after the storms.
That is a mother-nature caused event and there is nothing mankind can do to stop it.
However, up to an annual average of 40 per cent of those wildfires are human-caused.
Most of these incidences are caused by people not extinguishing campfires properly, tossing cigarettes from a moving vehicle or just plain carelessness.
These human-caused fires are totally unnecessary, and as is the case with all wildfires, they are dangerous and expensive to put out.
By mid-July, more than $4 million had been spent on attacking and suppressing wildfires.
It has been estimated that total could increase to $10 million by the end of the season.
This is a ton of money that B.C. taxpayers are paying, especially when more than one-third of the this year's fires have been caused by human error.
So, the B.C. Liberal government is looking at ways to reduce and, hopefully, stop human-caused fires.
Prince George MLA Mike Morris, Parliamentary Secretary for the Minister of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations, is conducting a review of the current fine and penalty structures related to human-caused forest fires.
He is considering a number of penalty options, including doubling fines for not extinguishing a campfire; banning people who break campfire bans from using provincial parks; and impounding vehicles of folks who flick cigarettes out of their vehicle windows.
While some folks may think these penalties are too harsh, we don't agree with them.
Having a campfire is not a right; it is a privilege.
Folks who neglect the rules of campfire safety should lose those privileges.
Automobile impoundment helps keep drinking drivers off the road, and it would be deterrent for those flick burning cigarettes and the like out of their vehicle windows.