The City of Kamloops plans to ask for extra funding to do prescribed burns during the winter months.

Mayor Ken Christian said the city spends up to a quarter million dollars per year to manage forest fuels. But he says that’s a “drop in the bucket” for protecting all of the interface zones in the city.

“It’s been something that people don’t like to talk about. They don’t like in the middle of winter when things are all nice that we smoke up the valley,” Christian told the NL Noon Report. “But I think what we’re seeing today is the results of not doing that. So I think we have to rethink that.”

Christian says he spoke about the need to do more prescribed burns when he met last week with Forests Minister Katrine Conroy and Municipal Affairs Minister Josie Osborne.

Yesterday, B.C. Premier John Horgan also said more needs to be done to reduce the interface fire risk.

“I’m hopeful that we’ll have allies in the federal government to work on clearing out the fuel,” Horgan said.

“That’s the biggest challenge in interface communities, is there’s too much fuel on the forest floor. And we need to give value to that, and remove it in a way that will allow other industries to emerge. This is how I think we go forward.”

Much of B.C., including Kamloops, is now mired in a drought with the fire danger rating being high to extreme. Currently, there are 319 active wildfires burning in B.C.

There have been 1,042 fires in the province since April 1 which have burned just under 175,000 hectares; of that, more than 171,000 hectares have burned in the past two weeks, between June 28 and July 13.

(Photo: @KamFire)