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The provincial government blew through its summer firefighting budget early in the fiscal year - now, it's inching toward $300 million.
To date, the province has spent approximately $260 million to fight 1,800 wildfires since the fiscal year began April 1, four times the $63-million annual budget allotted for fighting fires in B.C.
Those costs will continue to rise daily as provincial ground and air crews battle new and current fires.
At the present time there are 13 fires of note in the province including eight in the Southeast district and one, Testalinden Creek, in the Kamloops district.
A total of 485 firefighters are still working those fires including more than 150 at Testalinden.
And, there's still a month, or more, left in the fire season.
If costs continue to rise as they have, 2015 could go down as the third most expensive fire season in terms of firefighting budgets since the disastrous season of 2003.
That year, the province spent $372 million on firefighting, second only to 2009 when $382.1 million as spent.
Last year, the provincial government paid just shy of $300 million on the firefighting effort.
While this year's fire season started earlier than usual, the total number of fires will likely come in at around the 10-year average.
To date, about 1,800 fires have been reported. The 10-year average is 1,847. The worst year was 2009 when more than 3,000 fires broke out.
The number of hectares burned will end up well over the 300,000 ha barrier.
To date, 296,000 hectares of timber have burned. That compares to 369,000 last year, the worst since 2003. About 337,000 hectares burned in 2010.
While touring the Shelter Cove fire in July, Premier Christy Clark said the province would spend whatever it took to control the fires.
"You can never predict it," said Clark when asked if the budget will be re-evaluated next year.
"What we do with the budget is look at, I think, a rolling five or six-year average. We take that average and we plug it into the budget. But we always know if it goes over the set budget amount, we spend what we need to."
