British Columbia·Feature

Updated daily: B.C. wildfire map shows shifting boundaries

The question weighing most heavily on the mind of most fire evacuees is: How close is the fire to my house? The B.C. Wildfire Service maps the boundaries of the fires, updating once a day, which makes that data public.

Check regularly to see how fires throughout the province have moved and changed

CBC's maps contain updated information about the size and locations of significant wildfires throughout B.C. (Darryl Dyck/Canadian Press)

The question weighing most heavily on the mind of most fire evacuees is: How close is the fire to my house?

The B.C. Wildfire Service maps the boundaries of the fires, updating once a day and makes that data public. It also keeps tabs on the status of each fire, classifying it as either:

  • A fire of note, which means a wildfire that is highly visible or poses a potential threat to public safety (red on the map)
  • An active fire, which is a wildfire that is not considered a fire of note (orange on the map)
  • An inactive wildfire (purple on the map)

CBC News downloads this data once a day to create this interactive map. Zoom in to examine specific communities. Clicking on a fire area will bring up details about that fire from the B.C. Wildfire Service.

CBC News has also created a mobile-optimized Google map.

Here, the fires are depicted as points. Clicking on a point brings up current information about that fire, including size, cause and links to evacuation information. 

Any discrepancy between the two maps is likely due to differences in when the information is released. The fire boundaries are updated once a day by the B.C. Wildfire Service, while the points map is updated multiple times.