Calvin Rochon, a Squamish-based conservation officer, said there were 16 tickets handed out in the Sea-to-Sky region over the long weekend. At some campfires, multiple people were issued tickets.<\/p>\n
“We have beautiful natural resources here in the province and to keep them as they are … we need people to respect the wildfire restrictions and closures,” he told CBC News.<\/p>\n
Two violation tickets were also issued\u00a0to people for accessing restricted areas near the out-of-control Wesley Ridge wildfire<\/a> on Vancouver Island.<\/p>\n “Just being in that area alone is against regulations, and then having the fire, of course, is against those restrictions as well,” Rochon said.<\/p>\n He said officers were seeing a “high volume of non-compliance” since the campfire ban went into effect on the South Coast\u00a0on July 17<\/a>.<\/p>\n The campfire ban does not\u00a0apply to Haida Gwaii and parts of the Central Coast, including Bella Coola.<\/p>\n Campfires \u2014 which fall under\u00a0Category 1 fires<\/a>, according to the B.C. Wildfire Service \u2014 are fires\u00a0that are no more than half a metre high by half a metre wide, though outdoor stoves are still\u00a0allowed under the ban.<\/p>\n “Open fire is the largest cause of human-caused fires provincially,” said Christi Howes, a fire information officer with the B.C. Wildfire Service.\u00a0“Human-caused wildfires are entirely preventable and may divert crucial resources from naturally occurring and\/or existing wildfires that we are tasked with.”<\/p>\n Howes said fire prohibitions are useful to lower\u00a0the chance of more human-caused fires, especially when firefighters anticipate more lightning-caused fires, or in “critical fire situations” like the province is under right now.<\/p>\n She said firefighters were seeing high seasonal temperatures and historically dry conditions this month.<\/p>\n At a news conference on Wednesday, provincial officials said that rain over the province on Wednesday would only provide a limited reprieve.<\/p>\n “What it does is it resets our conditions, but only at a very micro scale,” Cliff Chapman, the B.C. Wildfire Service’s director of provincial operations, said of the rain.<\/p>\n “So we get a couple of days to really actively use direct attack on our fires …\u00a0it gives us the ability to do that, but it doesn’t knock down the hazard for the whole province for the rest of the fire season.”<\/p>\n Anyone breaching fire\u00a0bans could be hit with a $1,150 violation ticket, an administrative penalty of up to $10,000, or fines of up to $100,000 and one year in jail if convicted in court.<\/p>\n If a wildfire is triggered, the person responsible could have to pay all firefighting costs, which Rochon\u00a0says could amount to hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars.<\/p>\n “It’s a huge public safety risk. So it’s honestly not worth one night of a good time with your buddies in the backcountry,” he said. “Just respect the regulations and restrictions …\u00a0until you’re allowed to have fires again.”<\/p>\n Larger\u00a0Category 2<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Category 3<\/a>\u00a0fires \u2014 which include larger stubble fires and large burn piles \u2014 are already prohibited throughout B.C.<\/p>\n Howes said the ban will be in place until Oct. 31, but it could be rescinded before then if there is a lot of rain\u00a0or lower temperatures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The B.C. Conservation Officer Service (BCCOS)\u00a0said it handed out nearly $30,000 in fines to campers for violating\u00a0campfire bans…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":125804,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2147,50],"class_list":{"0":"post-125803","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-canada","9":"tag-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114986424938730388","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125803\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/violation-ticket-campfire-ban.jpg\")
An example of the tickets handed out to those violating a campfire ban on B.C.’s South Coast was posted to social media by conservation officers. (B.C. Conservation Officer Service\/Facebook)<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/bc-wildfire-service-patch-badge-stock-generic-file.jpg\"){kind=icon}
The wildfire service says human-caused fires divert resources from fires that cannot be prevented. (CBC)Larger fires already prohibited<\/p>\n