Wildfire in Fish Creek Community Forest

On the afternoon of May 1st, 2025, a wildfire occurred in the Fish Creek Community Forest, within Fort St. John’s city limits. The Fort St. John Fire Department responded with assistance from the BC Wildfire Service (BCWS) and fire departments from two nearby communities (Holliday, 2025). The fire grew to 47.1 ha before being declared “out” by the BCWS on May 9th (BCWS, 2025).

The suspected cause of the fire was human activity; however, there are several contributing factors that likely fuelled the blaze. Observed weather conditions that day were warm, dry, and very windy. Drought level information for early May is not available; however, according to the B.C. Drought Information Portal, this region (East Peace) was at a drought level 4 (out of 5) by May 14th (Ministry of Water, Land, and Resource Stewardship, 2025), indicating severely dry conditions.

Climate change is anticipated to create conditions in B.C. that are more conducive to wildfires (Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy (ECCS), 2019). As industrial forest management practices continue, the wildland-urban interface increases with population growth and more people recreate within forests close to urban areas, human-caused wildfire ignition is also anticipated to increase over time and human settlements are more likely to be affected (ECCS, 2019). Nineteen nearby homes were evacuated as a precaution during the Fish Creek wildfire (Berard, 2025). No structures were lost as wind conditions and firefighting efforts directed the fire away from adjacent homes; however, the Fish Creek wildfire event serves as an example of the potential for significant impacts to communities from wildfire.

References

B.C. Wildfire Service (BCWS). (May 13, 2025). G80204. BC Wildfire Dashboard. https://wildfiresituation.nrs.gov.bc.ca/incidents?fireYear=2025&incidentNumber=G80204&source=map

Berard, S. (May 1, 2025). Large fire breaks out at Fort St. John’s Fish Creek Community Forest. Energetic City News. https://energeticcity.ca/2025/05/01/large-fire-breaks-out-on-north-side-of-fort-st-john/

Holliday, I. (May 1, 2025). Wildfire burning in park in Fort St. John, B.C., ‘tactical evacuations’ reportedly underway. CTV News, Vancouver. https://www.ctvnews.ca/vancouver/article/wildfire-burning-in-fort-st-john-park/

Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy (ECCS). (July 2019). Preliminary strategic climate risk assessment for British Columbia. https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/environment/climate-change/adaptation/prelim-strat-climate-risk-assessment.pdf

Ministry of Water, Land, and Resource Stewardship. (May 15, 2015). British Columbia drought monitoring summary: Valid for 2025-05-13. https://services1.arcgis.com/xeMpV7tU1t4KD3Ei/arcgis/rest/services/service_67ff143482254457af94c000401a2a76_form/FeatureServer/0/1/attachments/1