Since the beginning of April, wildfires have destroyed more than 730,000 hectares throughout British Columbia, with much of the activity in the northern part of the province.
On Vancouver Island, fires have hit hard, especially near Port Alberni, even leading to some Area F properties in the Cowichan Valley being evacuated. Fires don't stop at boundaries on a map, after all.
It’s a substantial amount of forest land, but this year is not the worst year on record.
In 2023, wildfires destroyed close to 2.9 million hectares in the province, making that year by far the worst wildfire season ever recorded.
Just a few years earlier, 2018 saw destruction of 1.35 million hectares and 2017 had 1.2 million hectares burned. And in 2024, the fire damage was 1.08 million hectares. Four of the worst wildfire seasons ever recorded in British Columbia have been within the past decade.
It wasn’t always like this. Earlier fire seasons were far less destructive than those we have seen in the last 10 years.
The 2014 wildfire season — at that time the third-most destructive in British Columbia’s history — burned almost 360,000 hectares. This is less than half the amount of land burned so far in 2025, and roughly one-eighth the amount destroyed by fire in 2023.
The 2003 wildfire season, one of the most catastrophic on record in the province, saw around 265,000 hectares destroyed. However, the damage is notable as it came close to cities and homes. The 2015 and 2009 fire seasons were also destructive, but the amount of land burned in any of these seasons is just a fraction of what we have seen so far this year.
The one anomaly in past fire records was in 1958, when close to 856,000 hectares were burned. That year also had a significant drought.
This year, hot weather conditions have been recorded, with several communities breaking multiple hot weather records during the summer months, and the past winter was noticeably drier than normal.
In the northern part of the province, where summer has traditionally been the wet season, recent summers have been hot and dry. Drought is all but expected in the Cowichan Valley in the summer now.
Changing conditions over the past decade cannot be ignored. Heat records have been broken in many locations across the province. Wildfire seasons have become far more intense and destructive than in the past.
At this point, debating whether climate change is real or whether it is human-caused is irrelevant, though the scientific consensus is more than clear.
Instead, strategies are needed to cope with increasingly destructive wildfire seasons, because whatever you believe the cause is, they are happening and they are coming more frequently and more destructively than ever.
— Black Press
