Heat wave escalates forest fire concerns in B.C.

As the hot, dry weather continues to blanket much of B.C., raising the risk of new forest fires, crews are battling a major blaze northwest of Lillooet in the Bridge River Valley.

The blaze broke out on Friday, and continues to threaten homes and businesses between Tyaughton and Gun Lakes, a popular recreational area.

The lack of wind in the area has helped crews fight the fire,but it is only 15 per cent contained, according to Elise Riedlinger, aprovincial fire information officer.

"The latest results from the Tyaughton Lake fire were positive. Yesterday it was still holding at 850 hectares no significant growth and our incident commander was quite happy with yesterday's results," Riedlinger said Wednesday morning.

The provincial Forest Service is also boosting the number of firefightersbattling the blaze, which is one of more than a dozen significant fireslisted as activein B.C.

"Yesterday we had 61 firefighters. We'll have those same firefighters today, as well as another 40 were heading there yesterday. We'll still haveseven helicopters water bucketing and heavy machinery that is working on building a guard around the fire," she said.

About 25 homes in the area have been ordered evacuated and hundreds of residents remain on evacuation alert. Highway 40, the main route between Lillooet and Gold Bridge, is now open, but vehicles require an escort pilot to pass through.

Hot temperatures raise concerns

Forestry officials have blamed the hot, dryconditions and high winds for fanning the blaze, and are raising concerns about new fires in other areas. The fire danger rating is now listed as moderate or high across most of B.C. with some isolated spots in the southern areas of the province rated extreme.

An open fire ban is already in place for the Kamloops area, in the Interior of B.C., and Donna McPherson of the Coastal Fire Centre told CBC News burning restrictions will be in place shortly for Vancouver island as well.

"Today as of noon, we're putting a Category1 and2 restriction in place. We're allowing campfires, but basically we're restricting all backyard burning," said McPherson.

But the high temperatures have been welcomed by many British Columbians, who have being flocking the beaches and lakes after work all week as the unseasonably hot temperatures go well into the long June evenings.

On Tuesday, arecord high for the date of 30 C wasset at the Victoria International Airport, hotter than the previous record of 27C set on June 2, 1978, according to Anne McCarthy of Environment Canada.

"Part of what's fun about this record frequently by five o'clock in the afternoon when we take a synoptic observationnormally by then, we've hit the record but in this case, it continued to warm up past that five o'clock, it was more into six and seven o'clock, when we finally hit our max," said McCarthy.

Temperature records were also setTuesday in Squamish, White Rock and Pitt Meadows and more records could fall Wednesday and Thursday across Metro Vancouver. But by Friday, they are forecast to drop in many areas of the province as rain moves in for the weekend.