Category Archives: Forest Fires

As May turns into June, the B.C. Wildfire Service has already been in action on 227 fires in the current fire season. That’s not an unusual figure, the service’s chief fire information officer says. But what is unusual is how aggressive the current fire situation is, with several fires already posing serious challenges to firefighters. “This has everything to do with the weather,” Kevin Skrepnek said Sunday. “Unseasonably hot and dry, six to 10 degrees hotter than usual in most places, this feels more like early July.” There are currently 73 fires burning across the province, with a trio fires of note.

Firefighters are battling an out-of-control wildfire in Alberta’s Kananaskis Country. The province issued an emergency alert for the Municipal District of Foothills shortly before 4 p.m. Sunday, and notified residents that a voluntary evacuation was in place for areas west of Highway 762, between Highway 22 and 178 Avenue W. …The blaze, located near McLean Creek, about 16 kilometres southwest of Bragg Creek, was approximately 100 hectares in size as of 5:45 p.m. Sunday, according to the alert. It was first spotted in the early hours of Sunday morning. …The fire was relatively contained to the McLean Creek area as of 9 p.m. Sunday, Evans said with fire retardant holding the blaze and water bombers set to resume their runs early Monday morning. Crews will be working on breaks to keep the fire in place. But with a high of 27 C on the horizon for Monday and low winds on the horizon, about 20 Redwood and Rocky View firefighters will be ready to go if conditions rapidly worsen.

Per a report release issued on May 14, the BC Wildfire Service is strongly recommending that the public use extra caution when lighting or disposing of any fire, as well as immediately reporting any smoke or wildfires that they see. Over the next week, unreasonably hot, dry and windy weather is on the horizon for the entirety of the Prince George Fire Centre region, which includes Fort St. James. Due to these particularly dry and uncommonly windy conditions, the largest forest region in B.C. is especially susceptible to any sort of wildfire. At the time of its release, the report states that since April 1, 2018, the BC Wildfire Service has responded to 48 fires within the Prince George Fire Centre region, also stating that they believe all of these fires were caused by human efforts.

The B.C. Wildfire Service is battling three wildfires across the province — two that have exploded in size over the course of an afternoon. The Allie Lake fire, north of Kamloops, has grown to 800 hectares. It was around 60 hectares earlier in the day. The blaze isn’t far from the perimeter of last summer’s Elephant Hill fire, which was one of the largest in the province during the season. Another wildfire near Xusum Creek, about 35 kilometres west of Lillooet, has tripled to 300 hectares. …Two other evacuation alerts are in place and residents are urged to check the Squamish-Lillooet Regional District website for further information. …A third wildfire is burning on Vancouver Island, about 15 kilometres southwest of Campbell River. The B.C. Wildfire Service says the fire, near Middle Quinsam Lake, is now bigger than 12 hectares. There are 19 firefighters on the ground with two helicopters in the air.

Firefighters are holding back a wildfire from the northern Alberta community of Janvier and the Chipewyan Prairie First Nation. The municipal hamlet, the First Nation and the Métis community are about 120 kilometres south of Fort McMurray and have been on an evacuation alert since Wednesday. The municipality and the province have warned residents to be prepared to leave if the fire gets close to the community. Jody Butz, fire chief for the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo, said forestry crews aided by the Indigenous community have been holding back the fire, which covers 237 hectares. Bulldozers are building fire guards and water tankers have been bombarding the flames. “Alberta forestry has deemed the wildfire as out of control in its current status,” Butz said. “But the suppression efforts and the amount of resources that have been placed on it have had a positive outcome on it.”

WINNIPEG — The weather co-operated Thursday with efforts to evacuate more than 1,000 people from two First Nations communities threatened by forest fires in northern Manitoba. With thick smoke no longer causing trouble at the airport in Little Grand Rapids, planes and helicopters were moving people out of the community as well as neighbouring Pauingassi, about 260 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg. …”As long as everything goes well, we are working towards getting everybody out … by the end of today.” A dry spring has led to an early forest fire season across Manitoba. There have already been 173 wildfires, compared to an average of 105 at this time of year, the province said.

Manitoba officials say a fire nearly half the size of Winnipeg that is raging toward Little Grand Rapids and Pauingassi First Nation was human caused. Hundreds crowded into a hot school gym in Little Grand Rapids overnight, waiting to be flown to safety as the fire scorches closer toward the fly-in community about 265 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg. A spokesperson for the provincial government said Wednesday the fire was human caused and started around midday on Monday before growing rapidly. “Initially the fire was one-tenth of a hectare and crews believed it could be contained, however high winds picked up, and the fire got into a section of brush with taller trees and the fire began to run along the tree tops,” the spokesperson wrote in an email.

FORT ST. JOHN, B.C. — The BC Wildfire Service will be bringing in more crews today to respond to a number of fires that flared up north of Fort St. John on Tuesday. Amanda Reynolds, Fire Information Officer with the Prince George Fire Centre, says that hot and windy conditions on Tuesday helped to fan the flames of several spot fires sparked by lightning over the weekend. Reynolds explained that two fires in particular have ballooned in size since Tuesday, when their smoke plumes were first noticed by fire crews from the air. …Reynolds added that while several fires have grown quickly in size in the past few days, the current situation is much less dire than two years ago, since none of the fires are currently threatening any property.

A University of Calgary study says there need to be more wide, open spaces to prevent catastrophic wildfires… Researchers from the university’s Schulich School of Engineering used high spatial resolution satellite images to study the two costliest fires in Alberta history: the one in Fort McMurray and the 2011 fire in Slave Lake. The aim was to determine how civic design and planning helped fuel or prevent the spread of the fires. The team found destruction of many of the buildings could have been predicted based on the nearness of trees and vegetation to residential neighbourhoods. “We checked the areas and we found that within the minimum 10-metre boundary, there was forested area. Depending on the density of the forest, 30 metres or even 50 metres are considered dangerous,” said Quazi Hassan, lead researcher from the Department of Geomatics Engineering.

Two significant wildfires are burning in B.C., one of them forcing an evacuation alert. The Avery Hill fire was sparked on Wednesday afternoon and is already 60 hectares in size. The BC Wildfire Service has classified it as an out-of-control fire. The fire is burning about 55 kilometres northwest of Kamloops, not far from the location of last year’s Elephant Hill fire. A second wildfire is burning about 35 kilometres west of Lillooet near Xusum Creek and is 25 hectares in size. Like the Avery Hill fire, it started Wednesday afternoon and is classified as an out-of-control wildfire. An evacuation alert is in place due to the Xusum Creek fire. Residents are urged to contact the Squamish-Lillooet Regional District for further information.

The Rabbit Creek wildfire at Prince Albert National Park in Saskatchewan is growing despite the efforts of Parks Canada. The fire is now 24,000 hectares in size, with some spotting on provincial lands outside of the park boundaries. …According to a spokesperson from Parks Canada, all available resources have been deployed to this incident. Crews from the province of Saskatchewan, Little Red River Cree Nation, the province of Alberta, and the province of Ontario are also fighting the fire. Dry conditions and warm weather are contributing to increased fire activity and significant smoke in the area.

Park officials said the fire is currently located in the southwest corner of Prince Albert National Park, along the border of Rabbit Creek. Fire management staff started a prescribed burn in the southwest part of the park May 4, but officials said the fire blew out of control due to un-forecasted high winds in the area. …Dean MacDonald, incident commander on the fire said crews from the park, the province, Little Red First Nation and Alberta have been working on the wildfire, and reinforcements are coming from Ontario this week as well. …“This fire was burning under forest conditions where everything was burning; it happens very rarely where all fuel types burn,” MacDonald said. “Typically, an Aspen stand will actually hold off fire and reduce the spread. Under these significant wind conditions we’ve had, everything was burning at the same rate.”

VANCOUVER – A small wildfire continues to burn on Brunswick Mountain, north of Lions Bay. “There’s a lot more smoke in the area today — the sky around that area is full,” says NEWS 1130’s Darren Grieve, who flew over in the NEWS 1130 Air Patrol this morning. “Even when we got to Lions Bay — we’re looking north — we could see that smoke. We could not see that smoke yesterday until we got right over top of the fire itself. So, you can certainly see that that fire has been smoldering all night long.” …The fire is about 0.1 hectares in size. Fire Information Officer Donna MacPherson says ground crews are continuing to tackle the blaze. “This morning, they are hiking up the side of the mountain to gain access into some parts of the fire. It’s in pretty steep terrain, off of a selection of hiking trails up in the area.” …The cause of the fire is not yet known.

While the Northwest Territories’ wildfire season has yet to officially begin, residents are already being affected. The highway connecting Alberta and the NWT was closed on Saturday, May 12, as a forest fire jumped the road – forcing a state of emergency for the Alberta community of High Level. …“The increased danger is due to large areas of dead, dry grass and gusty winds. These areas will ignite easily and spread quickly, creating erratic, hard to control wildfire; please use extreme caution,” warned Alberta’s government. …Imaging from NASA’s MODIS satellite program suggests there have yet to be any wildfires north of the Alberta border in the 2018 season.

The B.C. Wildfire Service says a 30 hectare forest fire burning west of Fort Nelson in Northern B.C. is under control. The Northern Rockies Regional Municipality says the Emergency Operations Centre was activated because of the fire’s proximity to the town. It issued a local state of emergency and an evacuation order for an area west of the town in the Radar Road area, but has rescinded the order, noting it is safe for any evacuated residents to return to their homes. The wildfire service tweeted Friday afternoon that its personnel were responding to the fire with members of Fort Nelson’s Volunteer fire department. airtankers and a helicopter.

A series of forest fires in Mackenzie County Saturday have been contained overnight and the state of local emergency was cancelled Sunday morning. There are no immediate threats to structures and both Highway 58 and Highway 35 have reopened, county officials said in a public notice Sunday morning. Motorists are advised to watch for crews working in the area. Forest fires on either side of Highway 35 led RCMP to close the area about 30 km north of the town of High Level, RCMP officials said in a news release Saturday. Mackenzie County declared a state of local emergency just after 7 p.m. Saturday and issued a voluntary evacuation of a campground and around a dozen cabins on Hutch Lake as a precaution. The evacuation was lifted at 9 p.m. allowing residents to return to their homes. The Hutch Lake campground remains closed.

With warm weather, a high snowpack and floodwaters rising throughout the province, it may seem like B.C. is set to repeat last year’s weather patterns, which led to a catastrophic summer of fires. But it’s still too early to reliably predict the wildfire forecast, even though there are already 45 active fires burning in B.C. and a few of those burned all winter. Last summer, the province was in a state of emergency for 10 weeks, about 65,000 people were forced from their homes, more than 190 houses were destroyed and the province was blanketed with thick smoke. More than $568 million was spent trying to control more than 1,346 fires that covered 1.2 million hectares. And it could get worse — wildfires are likely to increase in intensity and frequency, due to climate change, a report by Canadian Wildland Fire Strategy says. The results of a $900,000 investigation into last year’s fires and floods…are expected very soon. 

Due to the massive increase in wildfire activity during 2017, homeowners are being urged to take advantage of the free FireSmart fire protection assessment being offered in the area. The Nakusp and Area Community Forest and the Regional District of Central Kootenay are working with non-profit association FireSmart Canada to mitigate property loss in vulnerable rural areas. The assessment specialists will provide customized tips and strategies to reduce the risk of wildfire damage to homes and outbuildings during the 2018 fire season. In rural areas where private property, crown land and forestry operations border each other, fire has become a monstrous threat that shows no signs of lessening.

With 17 fire bans already declared across Alberta, a provincial forestry official said wildfire conditions are considerably worse than last year. Despite…record snowfalls in some parts of the province, numerous areas [in] Alberta have prohibited open fires… That’s in contrast to May 2017, when conditions quickly greened up to reduce the fire threat, said Travis Fairweather, wildfire information officer for Alberta Agriculture and Forestry.  “It’s a lot drier this year, there’s a lot more fire bans and restrictions,” he said. “If it continues, it’s definitely a sign it could be a long summer for fires and, for now, we are seeing the dangers rising and we do expect more advisories.” Dr. Michael Flannigan, a forest researcher at the University of Alberta, agreed. “The next three or four weeks will really determine what the rest of our fire season is like,” he said.