Coming To A School Near You : Defensive Drones

"It's almost like where gaming and school safety collide."

"I have some really serious reservations about the deployment of drones in schools." 

Curtis Lavarello School Safety Advocacy Council

 

"School districts have finite budgets and limited attention."

"If we spend significant resources on technologies designed to  respond after shooting begins we have to ask what we're not investing in instead."

Jaclyn Corin, executive director/co-founder, March for Our Lives 

Remote operators pilot Mithril Defense's Campus Guardian Angel drones, which the company says can deter active shooters. Mithril Defense

 

"These are the first schools we're deploying into now."

"We think every school should have some kind of active-shooter suppression system, and five years from now, you wouldn't send your kids to a school that doesn't have one."

"An officer should never have to risk their life doing something that a drone can do, because we don't care if the drone gets shot. It's a lump of plastic."

"We just jump in with the next one. But an officer's life is irreplaceable." 

Mithril CEO Justin Marston   

Drones capable of zooming through hallways, smashing windows and pepper-spraying active shooters are set to be installed in schools in at least three states. Nine schools -- three in Florida, five in Georgia and one in Colorado -- have signed up with Austin-based Mithril Defense to have storage boxes housing the plastic, non-lethal aircraft which can be activated by teachers and are capable of reaching a shooter within 15 seconds. 

 

"Once I get the drones on you, you just can't escape them", retired Navy SEAL and Mithril Defense co-founder Bill King explained of the aircraft designed to distract their targets through flashing strobes and blaring sirens, while spraying the target with pepper gel, or ramming into them at 100 km/hr. 

 

Threats of school shootings in the United States, an increasingly commonplace disaster, have spurred a wave of spending on high-tech security for campuses. Statistics show that close to 400,000 students have experienced gun violence at their schools, according to a Washington Post tracker, since the 1999 attack at Columbine High School in Colorado. In that time, 435 shootings have been recorded, accounting for the multi-billion dollar industry.

 

The first campus to install the system was Deltona High School just north of Orlando, Florida, its 1,700 students protected in the last year. Another two Florida schools were chosen by the state to complete the $557,000 pilot project through state legislators. The drone systems will be tested in five schools in Georgia following state legislators approving a $500,000 pilot program with Mithril Defense, the systems to come online with the new school year. 

 

John Adams Academy, a public charter school in Sterling, Colorado plans to self-fund a drone program for its inaugural year for students from kindergarten through to grade 12. An app or classroom panic button will be available to teachers to activate the drones, with Mithril Defense's professional drone pilots remotely operating them. 

 

People stand outside Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, May 25, 2022.

Allison Dinner/AFP via Getty Images

 

The project was inspired, according to Justin Marston, by the massacre that took place in Uvalde, Texas at an elementary school where in 2022 19 students and two teachers were murdered while law enforcement waited over an hour on the school exterior before entering the classroom. Marston  was inspired by the Russian/Ukrainian military forces use of cheap drones, feeling that a non-lethal version could save lives threatened by school invasions. "The first 120 seconds are incredibly critical, because that's when most of the shooting happens."

 

While schools across the U.S. have welcomed a range of defence technologies from artificial intelligence-powered cameras, to weapons detectors in response to the threat of campus shootings, some feel that military-grade equipment such as the Mithril drones are misplaced on campuses full of schoolchildren. School security consultants argue that low-tech measures such as locking external doors are as effective as high-tech solutions to school shootings. 

 

 

"The primary selling point for these drones is their ability to offer live footage to law enforcement from areas where it previously would not have been available and to deploy deterrents, like strobe lights and pepper spray."

Pelican Institute for Public Policy  

 

"Our drones are already on site on charging pads in the school, and are flown remotely by our team as part of a managed response service. Our elite team in Austin can cover every school in the nation from a single operations center."

"Our drones cruise at 30mph to 50mph inside the building and sprint at 100mph outside."

"We place multiple boxes of 6 drones at locations throughout the school ahead of time, so we can select the closest box to the shooter and get there faster."

Mithril Defense, Austin 

 

The Political Impartiality of the International Joint Commission Over U.S.-Canada Boundary Waters

"He likes to make threats, like 'I'll end the Boundary Waters Treaty' that he perceives as important to Canadians."

"It's just another weapon in his 'art of the deal' when it comes to maybe a trade agreement or something."

"It's not bugging him too much, I don't think, because it's not blocking the things he wants to happen, as we see with him approving the mining."

Daniel Macfarlane, professor, School of Environment, Geography and Sustainability, Western Michigan University

 

"Ultimately, a lot of the co-operation on these water courses is really ingrained, and really sits a lot of the time at a local level."

"These are cooperative mechanisms, which foster a lot of goodwill between the parties, especially at a local level."

Riley Denoon, co-director, International Waters Governance Research Initiative

 

President Donald Trump signed House Joint Resolution 140 into law in late April, its effect being to roll back a Biden-era mining moratorium on over 200,000 acres of U.S. federal lands near the Boundary Waters watershed in Minnesota which drains into Canadian waters. This, in response to industry lobbying to develop minerals and geothermal energy in the region. Such mining, fear critics, will have the effect of undermining water protection.

 

Stating that he was interested in revisiting the two countries' sharing of lakes and rivers, President Trump in 2025 informed former prime minister Justin Trudeau he might cancel the 1908 treaty that demarcs the U.S.-Canada boundary, a water-sharing regime governed by several treaties and conventions with the 1909 Boundary Waters Treaty (BWT), representing the main foundational agreement for boundary waters of both countries.

 

According to Professor Macfarlane, the pacts are vulnerable through the fact that there is a notable lack of enforcement mechanisms. There is no indication at present, he feels, that Mr. Trump views the treaties as an obstacle to his larger priorities. Should the president wish to withdraw the United States from the BWT, that very act would be politically and diplomatically consequential in its potential to jeopardize interconnected pacts, the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement among them, which would place both countries at risk. 

 

International Joint Commission

 

"Politicians of all stripes and colours threaten a lot of things."

"Whether they actually do it in the end, I would think that you don't want to cut off your nose to spite your face."

Richard Paisley, director, Global Environment Facility International Waters Governance Initiative, University of British Columbia  

Both countries would suffer through weakening a system preventing one side from harming the other through water diversions, flooding, or pollution, should such agreements be undermined.The BWT, established in 1909, was a formal agreement between the United States and Great Britain, which acted on Canada's behalf to prevent and resolve disputes in water usage by the two countries involved; addressing other transboundary water concerns.

 

That agreement established the International Joint Commission (IJC) a cooperative, technical and advisory body with six commissioners; three from each country. There are some experts who believe the authority of the IJC has been diminished over the last century and a quarter; that the original mandate failed to equip the institution to handle the complex challenges of today. 

 

Both countries must ask the IJC to investigate any issues that concerns them both. As long as binational cooperation is operational, the organization's capacity to take decisive actions over urgent matters is limited when it cannot respond to items of concern to only one of the signatories. Concerns over water matters and pollution will be investigated when the IJC is asked to do so. While it has no authority to insist its recommendations are adopted, both sides have been reluctant to send disputes to the IJC for fear of rulings that might constrain economic activity, manufacturing, or agriculture.

 

To this point the ending of the mining moratorium by the Trump administration has not seen the IJC involved, since there has been no request for it to do so. The commission chair, Pierre Baril, declined comment on Trump's politics or treaty threats, pointing out the IJC is not political in nature, operating independently of changing governments, functioning through cooperation and consensus.  

 

International Joint Commission

"If Canada and the U.S. ask us to dig into the mining situation, we will do it."

"We are quite immune. We still operate independently, whenever the Liberals or Conservatives in Canada are in power or the Democrats or the Republicans are in power in Washington." 

Pierre Baril, Canadian IJC commissioner and chair 

Mea Culpa

"It suggests that we don't know how to reliably control these models or get them to do what we want."

"These models understood that OpenAI did not want them to break out of their sandbox and hack another company. But they did it anyway."

"[In OpenAI's case, it looks like the model escaped] before it even had a plan of what to do with internet access."

"[A model chasing] freedom [is almost predictable at this point -- it lets the system pursue its goals more effectively] and that's very scary."

"[We] don't know how to totally prevent [that]. This is actually going to get harder, not easier ... because they're going to get better at hiding their behaviour."

Jeffrey Ladish director, Palisade Research

 

"[The episode deserves] more scrutiny." 

"[Testing environments need to be treated like biocontainment labs, where a virus or bacteria could otherwise escape into the world]."

Andrew Lohn, Center for Security and Emerging Technology, Georgetown University 

OpenAI’s models autonomously hacked a tech startup. It signals a seismic shift in cybersecurity/The Conversation

 

Fears that AI systems have been sneakily testing their circumscribed roles by acting as free agents disobeying the guardrail rules fed into their 'consciousness' training, have resurfaced in the wake of an event that saw one of OpenAI's advanced models deliberately freeing itself from a locked-down test to attack another company's website. During what was meant to be a 'sandbox' test -- a closed environment used to assess the capabilities of OpenAI's most powerful model, GPT-5.6 Sole and its successor still under wraps, the incident was noted to have occurred.

 

Closed testing operations are routine protocols for OpenAI. The surprise was that on this occasion, 

'something' went terribly off-kilter. The models, tasked with searching out software vulnerabilities with no guardrails attached in this instance, ended up with the models breaking out through to the open internet to attack Hugging Face, a site to store and share code for developers.  

"If there's a failure here, it isn't that the AI wanted to hack something. It's that humans created a test where success was measured by achieving an objective, deliberately relaxed some of the normal security controls to measure the system's capabilities, and underestimated how effective the model would be at finding an unexpected path to success." 

"I think I'd be wary of jumping to  'rogue AI'. The models didn't develop their own agenda or decide to attack Hugging Face while twirling their digital moustache."

"[Like asking a dog to fetch a ball while leaving the garden gate open], If the easiest ball for it to find is in the park down the road, that's where it'll head."

"You wouldn't say the dog had gone rogue; you'd just say you underestimated how literally it would pursue the task."

Oli Buckley,  professor in cybersecurity, Loughborough University, U.K 

Rather than harboring any malicious intent, the AI models simply wanted to find out more information so they could complete their task.  (Image credit: wildpixel/ Getty Images)

In March, China's Alibaba developers discovered one of their models attempting on its on initiative, to mine cryptocurrency after connecting to an outside server, without authorization. Demonstrating that the current breakout was not an isolated event. Sam Bowman, Anthropic's head of model safely, received an email from the company's Mythos model in April, still  under testing, to inform him it was surfing the internet despite isolation from it at the onset.

 

From what OpenAI has publicly revealed relating to the event, it seems that the startup failed to detect the breach soon enough to address it convincingly, much less to warn Hugging Face. According to OpenAI, since then it has "added strengthened safeguards" to its testing process. Assistant computer science professor at the University of Illinois, Gang Wang, advanced his recommendation of the one solution that would work: cut internet connection entirely. "People are underestimating what AI can do", he stated. 

 

ChatGPT maker OpenAI says it is still investigating the "unprecedented cyber incident" that led its artificial intelligence systems to break out of a testing environment and hack into another AI company. AP

 

"Last week, Hugging Face disclosed a new kind of security incident⁠(opens in a new window) after they detected and contained an AI agent that compromised their infrastructure, something we expect to become more commonplace with the proliferation of increasingly cyber-capable models. After investigating, we now know that this particular incident was driven by a combination of OpenAI models — including GPT‑5.6 Sol and an even more capable pre-release model, all with reduced cyber refusals for evaluation purposes — while being internally tested on a benchmark⁠(opens in a new window) of cyber capabilities."

"We consider this incident to be an unprecedented cyber incident, involving state-of-the-art cyber capabilities, and are responding accordingly. We are sharing preliminary findings at this stage to help defenders understand what happened and to help calibrate on what models are now capable of. We will continue to conduct a thorough investigation alongside Hugging Face and will share more details on the vulnerabilities, incident, and findings when our investigation is complete."

OpenAI 

 

Iran on a Repressive Execution Tear

Rights groups condemned the latest executions and warned that they could signal a wider crackdown on protesters facing death sentences. (file photo, MEHR)

 

 

"With the breakdown of the ceasefire and the resumption of the war, we are deeply concerned that the authorities will exploit the situation to intensify the execution of political prisoners."

"The international community -- and the European Union in particular -- must make an immediate moratorium on executions a central issue."

Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, director, Iran Human Rights NGO (IHR) 

"Hundreds of political prisoners and protesters are currently facing capital charges", with around 100 already sentenced to death, warns the Iran Human Rights NGO. Over 70 people await the gallows in the central city of Isfahan. Iran's "Killing machine" must be a central issue for dialogue with the Islamic Republic, the IHR has repeatedly stressed.

 

Iran executed Erfan Esfandiari, reportedly 18, and Gol Mohammad Mohammadi, a 23-year-old Afghan national, on July 19. Iranian authorities accused them of involvement in the deaths of four members of the security forces.  IHR

 

Vahid Baniamerian, 34, and a physics academic, was sentenced to death, included with sentences issued to five other defendants charged with membership in the Iran-outlawed People's Mujahedin (MEK) organization. He and the five others have been hanged, their families only discovering their execution when it was reported by Iranian state media reports.

 

Dozens of Iranians identified as political prisoners by rights groups, are political prisoners that have been executed since the U.S.-Israel aerial bombardment of Iran began. They represent Iranian protesters against the regime, as well as people accused of being members of banned groups, along with others who have been convicted on charges of spying. 

 

File photo by ISNA shows Rajaeishahr Prison west of Tehran

 

Since the earliest days of the war which came to a halt in March, Iran has committed to increasing executions, interpreted by activists as a scheme to instill fear within Iranian society, with a view to preventing mass protests that shook the regime's leadership last year, from recommencing. The rupture of the on-again-off-again ceasefire has rights groups fearing that executions will continue to be expedited as another intimidation tactic to ensure silence prevails within the fearful populace.

 

According to Iranian authorities, the convicted are guilty of having carried out deadly attacks against security forces, or having targeted public buildings. Rights groups respond by charging that those arrested and confined in Iran's prisons were tortured and convicted in fast-tracked trials.  

 

So far this year according to IHR, over 400 people have been executed, even as the bulk of capital punishment strikes at those hanged on drug-related or murder charges. Inmates at Ghezel Hesar prison outside Tehran, in nearby Karaj, staged a sit-in protest in the wake of fellow prisoners taken to solitary confinement preparatory to hanging on drug charges.  

"These are prisoners who committed errors simply to afford the basic necessities of life, and they deeply regret their actions."

"Where else in the world is a human life taken for a first mistake?"

Prisoner statement 

Over 2,150 Iranians were put to death in Iran in 2025. Identifying it as one of the world's most prolific executioners, second only to China.  

 

Radio Free Europe / AFP

 

 

Trump's Trade/Tariff Edicts Roiling the International Community

"President Trump recognizes that decades of moral suasion have not eradicated forced labor from global supply chains."

"The United States has had a forced labor import ban for nearly a century, and rigorously enforces it; it's well past time for our trading partners to do the same."

"We're not in favour of sweatshops, and we don't want anyone else to be in favour of it [sic] either." 

U.S Trade Representative Jamieson Greer

 

"The Trump administration has shown little actual concern so far for human rights." 

"The Trump administration is using forced labour as an excuse to impose tariffs just as they declared emergencies under IEEPA to impose tariffs."

"Many Americans are wearing clothes that have forced labour in the supply chain. The irony is that many of our allies who are the targets of these new tariffs have better laws and enforcement against forced labour."

Andrew Hale, fellow, Advancing American Freedom, Washington 

A cargo ship full of shipping containers is seen at the port of Oakland, California, U.S.  REUTERS/Carlos Barria/

 

Canada is preparing, along with 59 other targeted trade-tariff countries, to have additional tariffs imposed, following the US Trade Representative having invoked Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 to introduce anti-discrimination tariffs on a targeted goods list comprising about five percent of Canadian imports at the astronomical rate of 50 percent. According to Jamieson Greer, a forced labour investigation backgrounded the new tariffs under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974.

 

Canada and Mexico were included along with China and dozens of other countries, after findings resulting from two rounds of public hearings and over 2,100 public comments, concluded that screening goods produced by child or forced labour were not sufficiently undertaken. Back in March when the investigation had been completed, including Canada "was unbelievably shocking to me", admitted Clark Packard, research fellow at Cato's Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy. "This poisons the well in terms of any USMCA negotiations", he prophesied.   

"The administration is trying to recreate what they lost when the Supreme Court shot that abuse of power down."

"[The 301 tariffs are] another unlawful power grab [by Trump and will likely be legally challenged]."

"In the end, Customs and Border Protection will spend billions in processing refunds."

Andrew Hale

Tech, clothes, baby gear, household basics and more are about to get more expensive, even if they’re made in the U.S.A.  NBC News

 

Under Section 301 which follows a formalized consultation and hearing process, it generally takes a year to complete investigations. Trade officials in the U.S. noted their expectations that the probes would be completed by midsummer -- expedited to replace the time-limited Section 122 duties imposed following the ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court against the International Emergency Economic Powers Act tariffs. 

 

Three categories have been established for the new duties protocol: 10 percent for countries with forced-labour prohibitions including Canada and Mexico; 10 to 12.5 percent net of most-favoured-nation rates for some products from the European Union, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and Switzerland; and 12.5 percent for the remaining countries. The Section 301 duties, unlike the 338 tariffs, include carve-outs for goods compliant with the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement in accord with the Federal Register Notice.  

"Given that USTR determined that Canada fails to enforce its existing legal regime against imports made with forced labour but provides scarce evidence as to this failure and its impact in displacing US exports, it's not immediately clear what Canada could do to obtain a wholesale reduction or elimination of this tariff."

Alfredo Carrillo Obregon, trade policy analyst, Cato Institute, Washington 

 

"[Canada has] one of the world's most robust frameworks to prevent and address forced labour."

 "Canada shares the United States' objective of ensuring goods produced with forced labour do not enter our supply chains."

"We will continue engaging constructively with the United States on this matter, as well as other outstanding issues, over the coming weeks."

Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc 

 

"[The Trump administration's justification for the new tariff regime is] too convenient to be taken seriously." 

"Forced labour is a real and pervasive problem in our supply chains and demands serious enforcement." "It should never be cheapened into a pretext for a tariff policy built on dubious legal theories and personal grievances."

Congressman Richard Neal, Democrat/Massachusetts, U.S. House Ways and Means Committee 

Source: U.S. Treasury Department  Dan Burns

 

Whitewashing Hitler's Austrian Birthplace

"The aim ​was to prevent any association with Adolf Hitler, so as to strip it of that mystique."

"[That mystique was encouraged by the Nazis' cult of personality around Hitler, under whose rule the] Fuehrer birth house [was an art museum. Hitler only lived there for a few weeks in 1889 before his family moved out]."

Stephan, Mlczoch, head, history department, Austrian interior ministry

 

"I think on the whole, the people of Braunau have accepted it and can live ‌with it." 

"I think it isn't a bad approach but whether it works as we all hope and expect, we'll have to wait and ​see."

Braunau Mayor Johannes Waidbacher 

 

"Every year at the Mauthausen concentration camp memorial there's a ceremony ⁠to say: never again. And in Braunau they're saying: let's forget as soon as possible." 

"The world won't ⁠forget where the worst mass murderer in history was born. Wikipedia won't change its entries."

"[There will be no reduction in the number of neo-Nazis making] the pilgrimage to Braunau." 

Robert Eiter, Mauthausen Committee/Network Against Racism and Right-Wing Extremism

A new police station will be officially opened in Adolf Hitler's birth house in Braunau am Inn, Austria, on Wednesday. A memorial stone outside reads 'for peace, freedom and democracy, never again fascism, million dead remind.' (Matthias Schrader/The Associated Press)

 

Austria, the country that gave the United Nations one of its successive Secretary Generals, and when it finally became public that he had joined the Hitler Youth during WWII, his reputation plummeted. That didn't stop Austrians from electing him to its presidency in defiance of reports of his Nazi past. Because the United States in its follow-up investigations determined that he might have been involved in war crimes, he was declared persona non grata in the U.S.; an awkward position for a man who from 1972 to 1981 was present in New York, presiding over the United Nations. Nor later in 1986 to 1992 when the president of a purported ally of the U.S. wasn't permitted entry to the United States.

 

Adolf Hitler, born in Austria, led Germany to 'occupy' Austria in the 1938 Anschluss and the Germany army was welcomed with huge Austrian public enthusiastic displays of joy at their annexation. The 17th-century building near the German border where the Fuehrer was born in 1889 has undergone a transformation, at a cost of $32 million refurbishment to turn it into a police station in the town of Braunau Am Inn. The stated purpose was to deter Austria's ascendant far-right from pilgrimages to the Nazi dictator's birthplace.

 

The once-yellow roughcast walls were whitewashed under contract by the Austrian architecture firm Marte. Above the entrance now hangs a police sign. A memorial stone with the inscription: "For Peace, Freedom and Democracy. Never Again Fascism, Millions of Dead Warn", remains dutifully in its place on the pavement before the renovated building.  

 

Austrian police officers stand in front of the new station. (Matthias Schrader/The Associated Press)

 

 Following Hitler's annexation of Austria, 65,000 Austrian Jews were murdered, 130,000 forced into exile. The far-right political party FPOe founded by former Nazis is currently Austria's most popular political party. The political party has about 37 percent backing by Austrian voters, reveals polling aggregator Europe Elects.

 

The house was owned by the same family from 1912 onward, leased in 1972 to the Austrian state, where it became a centre for disabled people. Its last private owner, Gerlinde Pommer, vetoed any transformation of the house, contesting its expropriation by the state, despite that neo-Nazis frequently flocked to the place where their worshiped hero had been born.

 

Finally, the Supreme Court approved purchase of the 800-square-metre property, three years after a law was passed in 2015 to take control of the dilapidated building. Demolishing the site as an option was out of the question for historians who urged Austria to acknowledge its role in the slaughter of over six million Jews, as well as Roma, gays, the disabled and mentally unfit and political prisoners.

 

Turning the building into a historical memorial risked the likelihood that extremist fascists would continue to visit the site, as to a sacred memorial to the greatness that was the Nazi conquest of Europe. In the end, an commission of experts guided a final decision to make it into a police station insisting the permanent police presence would "clearly show" -- stated the Austrian government -- that no commemoration of Nazism would be acceptable, the site would be "neutralized". 

 

"But that's absurd: humanity will not forget where the worst mass murderer in history was born", charged Robert Eiter, representing an association of escapees from the concentration camp, Mauthausen Committee Austria. 

 

Vehicles are parked outside the building where Adolf Hitler was born, which has been converted into a police station by Austria's government in hopes of preventing it from serving as a place of ‌pilgrimage for neo-Nazis, in Braunau am Inn, Austria, July 16, 2026. REUTERS/Angelika Warmuth

 

 

British Columbia's 2026 Wildfire Season

"This weekend we successfully completed the first drone ignition operation on a wildfire in Canada at the Brunswick Creek complex."

"[The drones use a plastic sphere dispenser to drop fire into specific areas] controlling the spacing and intensity of the fires and avoiding placing firefighters in challenging or dangerous terrain."

"The drone used for ignition is accompanied by observation drones outfitted with infrared and imaging capabilities, which gives us project intelligence not just during ignitions but through all phases of operations."

British Columbia Wildfire Service

The B.C. Wildfire Service used drones for the first time in July 2026 to do controlled ignitions in the battle against the Brunswick Creek complex of wildfires. Photo by B.C. Wildfire Service

 

Remotely piloted aircraft systems -- drones -- were tested by the B.C. wildfire service a few years earlier -- the intention was to use them along with traditional aircraft, and for the support of ground firefighting crews. The drone systems were brought into action at the Brunswick Creek and Ainslie Creek wildfires, referred to as the Brunswick Creek complex, once firefighters and ignition specialists felt assured they could be used safely. This past weekend was their initial deployment. 

 

Observation drones have the capacity to send live video to firefighters: "For example, it can keep crews safer by not having to work in smoke and on steep slopes", explained the service. High-resolution mapping and infrared visuals improve situational awareness "allowing us to see through the smoke to watch for ember transplant (flying embers that stretch a fire front into new areas), assess ignition effectiveness, and monitor fire behaviour".  

 

(Image Credit: BC Wildfire Service)

 

Firefighter safety and decision-making is improved by this new technology, helping the wildfire service to "better protect communities and the environment". The Matthew Creek and Tower Creek fires in the Enderby areas of southeast British Columbia, along with the two Brunswick complex wildfires are among four such fires of particular note at this time. 

 

This past weekend saw the Brunswick Creek complex grow; Brunswick Creek is now estimated at over 42 square kilometres, while the adjacent Ainslie Creek stands estimated at roughly 165 square kilometres. Nine evacuation orders in the Boston Bar area have been occasioned by the Brunswick complex fires. Both fires have mandated evacuation alerts in surrounding areas.

 

Almost 34,000 lightning strikes are estimated to have hit British Columbia late last week, with dozens of new fires sparked across the province. Forests will increasingly be drier with rising temperatures and limited rain, increasing the likelihood of coming days seeing the eruption of new wildfires. The northeast and central parts of British Columbia can expect many areas to experience worsening smoky skies.

 

Across the province there were 85 wildfires burning, most of them having sparked in the past week alone. According to the wildfire service, 122 wildfires have been declared successfully stopped, 23 of those fires have been put out in the past 24 hours.  

"Typically during this type of fire response we use helicopters to drop PSDs [plastic sphere dispenser], which ignite once they hit the ground."

"We had the opportunity to trial a drone, which would be the first time in Canada that we’ve utilized this type of innovation."

"I’ve been working for BC Wildfire for the majority of my life, and seeing the new technology of the drones being able to eliminate some of the risk and hazards was very impressive."

Operations section chief Arlen Kanary   

Aircraft will be "heavily engaged" in bucking operations at the Ainslie Creek wildfire on Tuesday (July 21), according to BC Wildfire Service. (Pattie Desjardins/Hope Standard)