Category 3 open fire prohibition planned for parts of the Northwest Fire Centre



SMITHERS – Effective at 12:00 (noon) Pacific Daylight Time on Friday, May 9, 2025, Category 3 open fires will be prohibited across the Bulkley Fire Zone and the Nadina Fire Zone. This includes the Nadina Forest District and the Skeena portion of the Skeena/Stikine Forest District.

A Category 3 open fire is a fire that burns:

  • material concurrently in three or more piles, each not exceeding 2 metres in height and 3 metres in width
  • material in one or more piles each exceeding 2 metres in height or 3 metres in width
  • one or more windrows each not exceeding 200 metres in length or 15 metres in width
  • stubble or grass over an area exceeding 0.2 hectares

In addition to Category 3 open fires, the following activities will also be prohibited:

  • air curtain burners
  • carbonizers

Please view a map of the affected areas below:

This prohibition applies to all areas that are outside of municipal boundaries. In addition, this prohibition applies to the following types of Crown land within municipal boundaries:

  • parks, conservancies and recreation areas (Park Act);
  • recreation sites, recreation trails, interpretive forest sites and trail-based recreation areas (Forest and Range Practices Act);
  • ecological reserves (Ecological Reserve Act);
  • wildlife management areas (Wildlife Act); and
  • private managed forest land (Private Managed Forest Land Act).

This prohibition also applies to the Village of Hazelton.

Municipalities may align with BC Wildfire Service prohibitions or impose their own prohibitions based on local conditions. If you are in a municipality, be sure to check if local prohibitions are in place. If you are within a regional district or improvement district, this prohibition applies as well as any local prohibition issued by the regional district or improvement district. BC Parks follows BC Wildfire Service prohibitions.

This prohibition does not include Category 2 open burning or Category 1 campfires. For more information on open burning, including a description of each category of burn, please click here.

Anyone conducting a Category 3 open fire within these regions, must extinguish any such fire by 12:00 (noon) PDT, May 9, 2025. This prohibition will remain in place until 12:00 (noon) PDT, September 29, 2025, or until the public is otherwise notified.

The Northwest Fire Centre is asking anyone who conducted a Category 3 pile burn over the fall or winter to check their burn site(s) and ensure they are fully extinguished.

Anyone found in contravention of an open burning prohibition may be issued a ticket for $1,150, required to pay an administrative penalty of up to $10,000 or, if convicted in court, fined up to $100,000 and/or sentenced to one year in jail. If the contravention causes or contributes to a wildfire, the person responsible may be ordered to pay all firefighting and associated costs, as well as the value of resources damaged or destroyed by the wildfire.

The Northwest Fire Centre would like to thank the public for its continuing help in preventing wildfires. To report a wildfire call 1-800-663-5555 toll-free or *5555 on a cell phone. For up-to-date information on current wildfire activity and prohibitions visit www.bcwildfire.ca

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Contact:

BC Wildfire Service
Information Officer
Northwest Fire Centre
BCWS.NWFCInfo@gov.bc.ca
250-876-6844

Connect with the Province of B.C. at www.gov.bc.ca/connect