 Thank you, Tara. And good morning, everyone. And I want to recognize the indigenous nations on whose traditional territory we're all gathered today. I'm joining you from the territory of the Shwepec, the Okanagan Sioux, the Sanayik and the Tanaha Nations. With me today is my colleague, Mike Farnworth, Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General, as well Neil McLaughlin, the Superintendent of Predictive Services for the BC Wildfire Service. And he will provide us with an up-to-date report on fire conditions. We also have technical experts who will be on hand to answer any questions afterwards. And there are Rob Schweitzer, the Director of BC Wildfire Service Fire Centres, and Peter Brot, the Executive Director of Regional Operations for Emergency Management BC. We're here today to present August's wildfire outlook and to highlight how the conditions have changed throughout the province in the last month. Public safety is our ultimate priority, especially as the threat of wildfires increases, not just from a seasonal perspective, but also because of the ongoing effects from climate change. So to address these challenges, we have made one of the largest investments in the history of the BC Wildfire Service, which will help transform the organization into a year-round operation. This year-round model will allow the BC Wildfire Service to put more emphasis on all four pillars of emergency management, prevention and mitigation, preparedness and recovery. Before we get into those details, I want to acknowledge and thank all BC Wildfire Service staff, the contractors and industry partners. On Tuesday of this week, a contracted aircraft conducted a forced landing while responding to the Connell Ridge Wildfire near Cranbrook. Thankfully, the pilot was able to walk away from the plane. And this is a stark reminder of the potential dangers of fighting wildfires. I am continually amazed by the professionalism, the resilience and dedication of the people who show up to do this work daily. They've been hard at work responding to wildfires and supporting those on the fire lines in all corners of our province. And with the recent heat wave we experienced across much of BC, many of these firefighters and support staff have been working under sweltering conditions. Some of you may have seen a video of the BC Wildfire Service post it recently of 600 meters of containment lines built to reinforce various sections of the home and creek fire. Due to the difficult terrain, crews worked for three days and plus 40 degree temperatures using hand tools to create the barrier. Challenging terrain is a constant, a consistent and constant thing with wildfires burning this summer. Given BC's diverse and mountainous geographic geography, many of the challenging wildfires crews are battling this summer are in terrain that's too steep and rocky for ground crews to access and attack the wildfire directly. And in many instances, this terrain is even too steep for aircraft to safely access the wildfire, particularly when smoke obscures visibility. It's clear that there has been a significant shift in our weather from the cool wet conditions we experienced in May and June that kept wildfire activity to a minimum. As we are now well into the hot and dry weather of August, I want to stress the importance of being prepared, planning ahead and staying informed. We know that fire mitigation and prevention work and these actions must be supported at the local level. As of 10 a.m. yesterday, there were 91 active wildfires burning across the province with six wildfires of note. Those are the Nehomen Creek, most active in the Stein Valley, estimated at 3700 hectares. Carameas Creek estimated at nearly 3000 hectares. Maria Creek, which is between Cache Creek and Lillewit, which is estimated at about 1000 hectares. Watching Creek north of Camloops, which is estimated at 200 hectares. Briggs Creek up in the Caslow area, which is estimated at 1500 hectares. And the Connell Ridge, which is south of Cranbrook, which is estimated at 500 hectares. Over the last seven days, we have had 154 new fire starts, nearly three quarters of which were caused by lightning. And to date, we've had 528 fires, which have burned about 22,000 hectares. But just by comparison, at the same time last year, we had more than 1300 fires burning and nearly 25 times the hectares had already burned. That's why we're asking all British Columbians to continue to exercise extreme caution to be prepared to have a plan and to stay informed to help prevent and limit the spread of wildfires. We all play a role in supporting that work through preventative measures that can help protect people and communities, as well as wildlife and livestock from wildfires. It's so important to be prepared. Look around your home and remove any branches, leaves or pine needles from your roof, your gutters, balconies, doorways and windowsills. And you should also pay really close attention to corners or other tight spots where debris tends to gather. You could create a 1.5 meter non combustible zone around buildings by raking or sweeping down to soil, rock or concrete. And keep any movable propane tanks or wood piles 10 meters away from buildings. Check all your exterior vents to make sure they're properly screened and in good condition. And cut your grass short because a mowed lawn is a fire resistant lawn. Grass shorter than 10 centimeters is less likely to burn intensely. And it's also so important to have an emergency plan. If you're planning to travel, check destination BC's know before you go webpage and campers and people using the back country should be aware of campfire burns. As of noon today, campfires are banned in Southern BC. Specifically, that is within the areas of Kamloops, Southeast and coastal fire centers. Make a point of checking out the firesmartbc.ca website to learn more about what you can do to protect your home, your neighbors and your community. And if the area you were planning to travel to is impacted by wildfires or is under an evacuation alert or order, connect with a local visitor center to rebook your trip to another part of the province. I'd now like to introduce the Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General Mike Farnworth to tell you more about how we can stay safe during wildfire season. Thank you, Minister Conroy. I'm Mike Farnworth, the Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General, and I'm honored to be speaking to you today from the traditional territory of the Lekwungen speaking peoples and the Songhees and the Squimal nations. As we progress through this wildfire season, I want to echo Minister Conroy's comments and urge people to stay informed and to be prepared. With the increasing fire activity, it's important to stay informed about wildfires and advisories in your region as well as any areas that you plan to travel. As of yesterday at 5pm, there are approximately 326 properties under evacuation order and another 500 properties under evacuation alert. By comparison, at this time last year, there were almost 4,300 properties on evacuation order and about 21,000 properties on evacuation alert. The province, First Nations and local authorities are providing evacuees with emergency support services. As of August 2nd, 197 wildfire evacuees have registered for emergency support services in the central region of the province. The resources being deployed by BC wildfire across the province include about 1,000 firefighters and other personnel fighting fires are on standby. Five incident management teams and 110 helicopters and planes supporting ground crews. People's lives and safety are always our number one priority. It is critical that people follow all the directions from their local government or First Nation and if you're placed under evacuation order, leave immediately. We're also asking residents to prepare yourselves, your family, home and community for any potential fires, follow all fire bans and avoid any activity that may result in a wildfire. If you've not already done so, now is the time to take 20 minutes out of your day and put together an emergency plan including packing a grab-and-go bag with all necessities so you are prepared if your situation changes suddenly. Recently, we announced that the Interact E Transfer payments are now available for people eligible for emergency support services. This means that evacuees will have quick access to supports for urgent basic needs such as food and clothing. As part of getting prepared for emergencies, I encourage everyone, especially in areas at risk of wildfire to pre-register with ESS online by using their BC services card app to log in. You can pre-register now for emergency support services at ESS.gov.bc.ca. As many COVID-19 restrictions have now been lifted, BC is also experiencing a significant increase in tourist travel and accommodation bookings. I want to encourage you to reach out to friends and families in other communities who may be able to provide shelter should you be placed under an evacuation order. This will help ensure that local commercial accommodation is available for those who have no other option. But to be clear, the province, First Nations and local authorities will be there to assist all families or individuals who need emergency care. The MBC has been working with First Nations, local governments and other partners to identify communities and venues that can support evacuees in the event of a large-scale evacuation. This advance planning will help keep evacuees as close to their home communities as possible. At this time, we're asking everyone to follow updates from their local First Nations, local government, local authority, the province and media. We need to be informed, be safe and be prepared. The more prepared people are for an emergency such as wildfire, the more quickly and safely people are able to respond if the time comes. Thank you. And now I'd like to introduce Neil McLaughlin to provide an update from BC Wildfire. Thank you, Minister. Good morning. I join you today from the First Nations lands of the Sequimac people and I'm honoured to live, work and play on these lands. Just to the host, I'm seeing that you've disabled screen sharing. If you could turn that on, please. Okay, so we're going to talk about the seasonal outlook for August. Before we get going, I'd like to cover the trends and statistics we've seen over July and how that set us up in terms of current conditions going into the month of August. And then we'll look at our latest forecasts and information in terms of what we can expect into the month of August. To start, we'll look at some climate statistics from our partners at Environment Climate Change Canada. Over the month of July, we did see hotter than normal temperatures above through, observed through the interior of BC. But what was most important was the below normal precipitation across most of the province. And this was due to a persistent upper ridge in the later portions of July and I'd like to speak to that a little bit more. That was what was associated with our hot dry spell and that ridge of high pressure took hold and delivered some of the hottest conditions we've seen yet this season. And that prolonged hot dry spell steadily cured our fuels and it increased our fire danger across the province. The graphics I'm showing on this slide along the top, it's our fine fuel moisture code and along the bottom our Duff moisture code. Both of them speak to the high pressure ridge and also the potential for rapid fire growth and high fire intensities. And as you can see as we moved from July 14th the middle of the month into the July 27th two weeks later, both of those indices increased significantly significantly across most of the province. Now, what's most concerning about high pressure ridges is when they break down and that's when those ridges of high pressure break down, lightning, gusty winds are typical and expected and so that's indeed what we saw. Over 35,000 lightning strokes were recorded during the last week of July in the southern and northeast portions of BC. And as a result we had 121 new fire starts in that period. 74% of them were lightning caused but also it's just as important were the strong winds that accompanied that ridge breakdown as those winds aligned with terrain that resulted in fast spreading fires and aggressive behavior that was challenging to fight fire in. I want to speak a little bit about the recent rain we're seeing in parts of the province. There have been significant amounts of rain recorded across the northern reaches of British Columbia. On this screen we're seeing our Duff moisture code as of Thursday, July 28th and then forecasting it forward to this Saturday. The rain is a really good thing in the northern reaches. As you can see the Duff moisture code is dropping down significantly across the north and as we move into August we're expecting to shift in terms of fire danger from the northern reaches of the province which was quite active in the spring to the south and so as you can see on the right we've elevated fire danger in the southern portions of the province going into August. The rain that we're expecting in the southern portion will be more isolated or smaller amounts and all it will take is a couple days of hot dry weather to bring us back up to high to extreme values. I'll also speak to the current conditions that we're seeing going into August so we do understand where our current conditions to the past years of history for two specific indices. One is the build-up index on the left and that speaks to the availability of fuel to burn and the other is the drought code shown on the right and that speaks to long-standing persistent drought conditions that take a long time to recover. From a drought perspective it's a good news because we're seeing a lot of above average drought conditions for this time of year in fact parts of the province are actually below normal for our drought code which is a good thing. However on the left we are seeing that persistent build-up of our build-up index through the southern portions of the province and again that's the fire danger shifting from the north to the south and will still be conducive to fire starts through the month of August. So let's look into the month ahead on the outlook. We are expecting above seasonal temperatures through the month of August and into early September and that's shown on the left. The signal for those above normal temperatures is certainly greater in eastern Canada but it's present over British Columbia through the month to come. There isn't a very clear signal for precipitation so we're expecting around normal precipitation amounts through the month of August and into September for BC. The other thing that I want to emphasize around the precipitation shown on the right-hand side of this slide is there's generally low confidence in the long-range precipitation forecast so we don't hang our hat on that forecast as much but the temperatures are noticeable. We also compare those forecasts to other international forecasting agencies and the trends are fairly consistent. Again above average temperatures through August into early September and then trending back towards seasonal temperatures into August. This slide is showing what you've heard earlier from the ministers around number of fires. The black-bold line going through this graph is just tracking the weekly number of fires we're seeing this season and the colors in the background are just showing the variability that has occurred over the past 20 years in terms of number of fires per week and as you can see there is a fair amount of variability as we enter the month of August anywhere from 50 fires to over 700 fires a week. This makes it difficult to assess what we're expecting going into the next week into the next month but what we do as forecasters is we look to years in the past that are trending similar, have a similar pattern to the way that this fire season is playing out and so there are two years that we're identifying those are years 2020 and 2011 are trending quite similar so we were expecting an increase in fire activity as in fact what we've seen in the past week there was about 149 new fire starts and we would expect a similar number of fire starts through the month of August and that is reinforced by those analog years. Despite that increased fire activity through August I want to remind folks that we are below normal for number of fires as we saw in the previous graphic but also in terms of area burned and so right now we're about 20% of our 20 year average for area burned and significantly less than what we saw last year at this time and this is mostly due to the fact that we had above normal over winter precipitation amounts cool temperatures in the spring, late snow melt and really a late start to the fire season we've had a two week dry spell which has increased fire but nothing compared to over a month of drying that we saw in previous years so in summary again we're expecting above average temperatures near normal precipitation amounts through most of BC in August and early September and then a gradual return to seasonal temperatures by October elevated fire dangers expect to shift from the north portions of the province down to the south and we are anticipating a similar number of fire starts through August as we observed in the later part of July when we have periods of warm weather breaking down and resulting in lightning and gusty wind conditions large fires that started in July will remain active into August and additional fire growth can be expected on these fires but when we do get intermittent periods of cooler temperatures that is very favorable for ongoing fire suppression efforts and successful initial attack on the new fire starts that we're expecting I will take questions but first I'm going to hand it back to Minister Conroy to finish this briefing Thank you Neil for that I think it's really important that we hear those numbers and recognize that as we're moving into August it is going to get hotter and it is already hotter but that we need to be prepared that even though we are so much under normal especially compared to last year we still need to be really safe but I want to thank everybody for joining us for this timely update I also want to encourage people to download the BC Wildfire Service mobile app it's a great app to have and over the long weekend the Provincial Wildfire Reporting Center supports a fire through the BC Wildfire Service mobile app and 81% included a photo and it's really really helpful to the firefighters and actually during the same period the Center received nearly 2,000 reports by phone so those photos they really help the Wildfire folks get out and increases the staff's situational awareness and really helps with the rapid operational decision-making of who and what to send to the fires and as Neil said we are going to open it up for questions now so I'll turn it back over to you Tara Thank you very much a reminder to media on the line please press star 1 to enter the queue for the opportunity to ask a question and a follow-up I will scan the room as well to see if we have any questions here today okay our first question we will actually start in the room this is for Minister Conroy if you can tell me why the government waited so long to put in this fire ban especially after the long weekend given that we knew that he was coming I don't think it was that long it was and people have been very very cautious I mean we still had almost 25% of our fires caused by human cause as opposed to lightning about 75% or lightning and about there's about 6% that we're not sure of so people have been pretty cautious and we thank them on that but we leave it up to the professionals to determine when they should bring in campfire bans and they've decided that we should now bring one in for the south and we're hoping everybody will make sure they take that very seriously follow-up Kylie given that we are expecting the heat to continue and will it be more proactively expanded to it forward? well it's expanded for the entire south part of the province and it's so it pretty much covers the entire area of the province where it needs to be right now and it appears that all the information has been distributed we have no further questions so that will conclude today's availability thank you everyone