Campgrounds in Kitimat are following suit with the provincial health orders as new restrictions have taken place limiting non-essential travel between health regions.
Though both Hirsch Creek Park and Radley Park campgrounds are scheduled to open three days before the restrictions may be revised on May 21st, 2021, the council agreed with the provincial health orders to restrict clients from booking or camping at sites in Kitimat if outside their health region.
“The government has come down with new provincial health orders that restrict not only camping but also the booking of accommodations outside certain regions,” said Martin Gould, Director of Leisure Services.
With the province usually split into five different health regions, the regions are broken up into three sections lumping a few together.
The Vancouver Coastal Health and Fraser Health areas are considered one zone; the Northern Health and Interior Health areas are also considered one zone; and the Island Health area stands alone.
“Our region deals with northern health which expands all the way to the Queen Charlotte Islands over to the Alberta border, then up to Alaska then down to just south of Quesnel, but the province on [April 23rd] said anywhere between northern health and interior health will be considered one region,” said Gould.
Campground operators are being asked to review their clientele and contact them if necessary and discuss the potentials of a refund or asking them to rebook for any time after May 25th.
On April 1st, the District of Kitimat launched a new online campground registration program. At the time of this report, 60 campsites were reserved with 12 of them made for sites between the long weekend, May 21-24.
“We only have one person who is booked from out of our zone for the long weekend in May so we’re going to contact them and have a discussion. […] We’re also going to create a PSA and hopefully be able to put something up on our new camping registration program for the public to read.”
The province has asked police officers and others in authoritative positions to do road checks on persons to make sure people aren’t travelling Interzone within the province. Violators of the new regulations can receive a fine of up to $575.
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