3 things you need to know about wildfires in B.C.

Wildfire season is never really over. 

When infernos subside in one region, they begin somewhere else. As the world continues to heat up and the climate changes, forested areas like British Columbia will experience greater wildfire impacts year-round, including on the physical and mental health of frontline firefighters.

In 2023 — the province’s worst wildfire season on record to date — more than 28,000 square kilometres of forest burned. Hundreds of homes were lost or damaged and vast stretches of landscape were left charred. Twenty years before, 2,600 square kilometres burned — making 2003 the worst year so far. Prior to that, the 10-year average was 250 square kilometres burned per year. Put another way, 2023 was more than 100 times as severe as a typical wildfire season at the turn of the century.

In 2024, more than 10,000 square kilometres burned across the province, displacing thousands of people. As of mid-January, there were 27 active fires in B.C., according to BC Wildfire Service. These smouldering remnants of last year’s blazes — called holdover fires — will likely flare up again this spring as the weather warms. Before they do, we have an opportunity to think about how we can coexist with a wildfire season that never ends. 

The choices we make now can prepare us for our fiery future and protect those on the frontlines — or they can leave the most vulnerable behind. 

Here are three things you need to know about wildfires in B.C.

1. Firefighters are in crisis — and we need to address it now 

Talking about wildfire, including how to support firefighters’ mental health, needs to happen year-round — especially in the winter.

“When it’s August 21st and the whole province is lit up, it’s hard to have an even-keeled response when we’re just figuratively and literally putting out one fire to the next,” former B.C. wildland firefighter Jessica Broder told The Narwhal.

Broder spent three years working for the BC Wildfire Service on the front lines of the province’s burning forests. Two of those seasons became the worst wildfire seasons in B.C. history. Broder hung up her hardhat at the tail end of the 2023 season. 

“What I found was the cumulative fatigue, not over just one season but over three years, and not having been able to properly process nor necessarily encouraged to process what I had felt or experienced on the line, it just caught up with me.”

“At the end of the season, you’re just exhausted,” she explained. “You haven’t really had a life for the past four to six months and lots of those people jump straight back into school and don’t really have time to process.”

Until very recently, most jobs in wildfire have largely been seasonal work; many wildland firefighters in B.C. and elsewhere are university and college students. But as wildfire seasons stretch out, firefighters are working longer seasons — and many, like Broder, are burning out. The result is a loss of experienced firefighters, just when we need them most.

To retain staff over the long-term, the BC Wildfire Service and other organizations are starting to offer more career opportunities. Last spring, the provincial government announced a new wildfire training program at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, B.C. 

While more career opportunities can provide firefighters better access to support, including for mental health issues, Broder said a mental health crisis is already unfolding.

2. Wildfires are happening closer to home — and they’re endangering our health 

Scientists say last year was the hottest on record, eclipsing 2023’s record and exceeding 1.5 C warming above pre-industrial levels for the first time. It’s a dire prognosis — but not unexpected, given the lack of urgency by wealthy and oil-producing nations, including Canada, to rein in planet-warming emissions. 

Our future in a world of endless wildfires includes an increase in what’s known as interface fires, where burning forests and communities collide. Kira Hoffman, a wildfire ecologist based in Smithers, B.C., said humanity has to accept the inevitability of more wildfire-related impacts in our own backyards — and to our bodies. 

“I think we need to reconcile what people consider to be normal when we’re now in this accelerated extreme,” she said grimly.

According to Health Canada, the country sees up to 240 deaths each year due to short-term exposure to wildfire smoke, and up to 2,500 deaths each year due to long-term exposure. As wildfire seasons stretch, firefighters are exposed to greater risks.

“We have this shifting baseline that’s happening, where we’re like, ‘Oh, it wasn’t as bad.’ But if you were to take any of the last seven fire seasons and compare them to any other time in record, you would be horrified,” Hoffman said.

John Vaillant, author of Fire Weather, an award-winning account of the devastating 2016 fire in Fort McMurray, Alta, agreed.

“There’s mounting evidence that we need to make the effort to imagine things that seem impossible,” he said. “We’re in a period of unprecedented acceleration, where natural events and geological events and historical events and technological events are all accelerating at the same time.” 

“Homo sapiens has never been here before — it’s totally uncharted territory.”

3. Local connections are essential for firefighters

When a wildfire burns within sight of a town or village, fear is a natural response. That fear is exacerbated when it’s unclear what’s happening on the ground to fight the fire. 

From afar, a wildfire often just looks like a wall of flame coming for the community. Most people don’t know how firefighters interact with a wildfire, including the steps they take to ensure public safety. Fewer still understand the way fire behaves.

“It’s not always super obvious from in town,” Christian Bichlmaier, a BC Wildfire Service incident commander, admitted.

Bichlmaier said establishing forms of communication between the firefighters on the ground and local communities can help assuage fears — and pave the way for collaboration.

Bichlmaier worked with a local First Nation to share information about what firefighters were doing to protect the community from nearby wildfires in 2023 and 2024 — and to co-develop firefighting plans that protected cultural and ecological values. Hoffman said finding ways to incorporate local input into wildfire response is vital, whether it’s on the fireline or through communication with people who know the area. 

“We need place-based knowledge and people who live here and know this place to fight fires and do controlled burning,” she says. “If you go on a fire somewhere, who are you going to ask about the weather? You’re going to ask the ranchers, you’re going to ask the First Nations communities. You want to know which way the wind’s going to blow? They’re going to know.”