B.C. sets up climate emergency task force amid wildfire crisis

British Columbia will form an expert disaster task force to rapidly deploy to, respond to and support people and communities facing emergencies amid a historic wildfire season that has destroyed about 400 structures, mostly homes, said Premier David Eby.

British Columbia will form an expert disaster task force to rapidly deploy to, respond to and support people and communities facing emergencies amid a historic wildfire season that has destroyed about 400 structures, mostly homes, said Premier David Eby.

Eby made the announcement Monday as he visited the North Shuswap Lake area, located about one hour east of Kamloops, where the Bush Creek East wildfire destroyed almost 200 structures.

"The goal here is that the task force will be working with the public service in partnership with the hard-working people from emergency response from the wildfire service to ensure we're deploying additional resources, we're deploying solutions as they're recommended to us," he said at a news conference in Kamloops.

Some local residents in the Shuswap area ignored evacuation orders to stay behind and protect homes from the fast-moving fire.

Hundreds of properties have been lost, thousands of people have been forced to evacuate their homes and two young firefighters have died on duty this summer as the worst wildfire season in the province's history continues, said Eby.

Then, there are further cascading threats of drought, landslides and floods that have become a new reality, the premier said.

"We don't have the luxury of time between emergencies right now in B.C.," he said. "There's a great deal of urgency because the scale of this wildfire season was so historic and because we're going into another season now where we're dealing with both drought and simultaneously the possibility of significant rainfall."