BC’s state of emergency is over
Posted September 15, 2017 11:50 am.
Last Updated September 15, 2017 11:51 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VICTORIA (NEWS 1130) – The provincial government lifted the state of emergency that was in effect for two months because of the wildfires in the BC Interior.
It was put into place July 7th to allow for better coordination between agencies responding to the fires and to public safety needs. A $100-million fund was made available to support the thousands of evacuees.
“The recommendation to government is made in consultation between [Emergency Management] BC and BC Wildfire Service and some of the issues we established as criteria when [the State of Emergency] was first extended the first time back in the middle of July,” says Robert Turner with Emergency Management BC. “Looking at — are there any large urban areas that are being threatened by wildfire? Do we see a return normal seasonal weather? Do we see a return to normal seasonal fire behaviour? Do we believe that the assets and resources required to address both the fires and the consequences of the fires can be met with available resources and that we don’t believe that we would require extraordinary new resources to be in place?
“Largely those criteria have all been met and so we recommended to government that those extraordinary powers of the provincial declaration were no longer required.”
The province says lifting the state of emergency doesn’t mean efforts to fight wildfires will ease, however the Canadian Forces will demobilize personnel who’ve been assisting with fire response efforts this season.
This has been the worst wildfire season on record, with more than 11,700 square kilometres of land charred since April 1st.
The BC Wildfire Service says it has spent more than $510 million on firefighting efforts so far this year. Fires continue to burn out of control in southeastern BC, where some people are still under evacuation orders.
The state of emergency ended at midnight.
“There’ll be no tangible difference [in the resources available],” says Turner. “What the provincial declaration provided us was the authority and power to bring to bear additional resources that were already been utilized.”
The last time the province called a state of emergency was in August 2003, also in response to wildfires, but that period only lasted six weeks.
