B.C. crews use drone in controlled burn during wildfire fight, in Canadian first

Fons Raedschelders said he “shed a very happy tear” over the weekend after wildland firefighters in British Columbia conducted a controlled burn using a drone on an active wildfire.

“It’s super exciting,” said Raedschelders, superintendent of the BC Wildfire Service’s cultural and prescribed fire program.

“Those of us who have been kind of working in this space and thinking about this for the last six to eight years of where we started the first ones on prescribed burns, we’ve been waiting for this moment.”

The wildfire service announced Tuesday that crews had successfully conducted the controlled burn using a drone on the south flank of the Brunswick complex of wildfires near Boston Bar, B.C., where residents of hundreds of properties have been evacuated.

The operation is described by the province as a Canadian first, and Raedschelders said in an interview Tuesday that there’s room for many more applications of drone usage in B.C.’s fight against wildfires.

He said the service has been testing drones in the prescribed burns program for several years and knew the technology could have a major impact on how crews battle fires in a variety of situations.

“We knew that once we could figure it out and get it in there that it would provide us with so much,” Raedschelders said.

Using drones to ignite controlled burns allows access to active wildfires in terrains and situations that are unsuitable for helicopters and groundcrews, he said.

The service also uses infrared cameras on the drones to track and map the progress of fires with high resolution images through thick smoke and other conditions.

Raedschelders said the images have been crucial in training firefighting tactics and they’re used to determine fire conditions without risking people on the ground.

“It provides a lot of what we call situational awareness,” he said.

“Intel is always the most important part of a lot of this work, and to be able to keep crews safe and be more efficient and have more options and see more, know more, so we can do the right thing and do more, it’s pretty exciting for me.”

For the ignition, crews used the drone to drop plastic spheres the size of Ping-Pong balls that ignite on impact through a chemical reaction.

Morgan Blois with the BC Wildfire Service said during a news conference updating the province’s fire situation on Tuesday that the use of drones to drop the ignition devices more precisely allows crews to better track the blaze and “prevent any further unwanted spread.”

It also improves safety for aircrews, as using drones provides them with a way to have fewer people in helicopters, preventing unnecessary risks to personnel, Blois said.

Speaking at the same news conference in Vancouver, provincial Forests Minister Ravi Parmar lauded the new use of drones in combating active wildfires.

“This is an exciting new step in wildfire suppression here in B.C.,” Parmar said. “These ignitions are often done by hand or by helicopter and are a key part in managing wildfires in very challenging terrain.

“I’m proud that British Columbia is once again leading the way with this technology, while helping to keep our crews safe.”

A BC Wildfire Service video posted to Facebook showed the drone flying low through areas of heavy smoke at levels where helicopters cannot safely operate.

Raedschelders said firefighters do not view it as a competition between drones and helicopters as a method of fighting wildfires, but rather as different tools that allow to more effectively combat blazes in different settings.

“We’re constantly uncovering new uses as we integrate the technology,” he said.

“The drone itself or the tools or the capabilities are the easy part. I would say the important part is the integration into response operations and the systems that we have in place.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 21, 2026.

Chuck Chiang, The Canadian Press