Lightning strikes from the storm that hit the city early Saturday morning sparked at least five new wildfires between Prince George and McBride, while humans are believed to have caused at least four more fires in the same vicinity.
One of those blazes was discovered Sunday morning along Highway 16, west of the parking lot of The Ancient Forest/Chun T’oh Whudujut Provincial Park, 120 kilometres east of Prince George.
“There’s currently a crew on it and it’s kind of being held at 0.2 of a hectare,” said Sharon Nickel, communications specialist for the Prince George Fire Centre. “It’s suspected to be human-caused.”
The fire is relatively small, but Nickel said because of its proximity to Highway 16 and the fact it is in a highly-valued area, on the edge of the only inland rainforest in North America, it has potential to threaten hikers in the popular tourist attraction and the BC Wildfire Service responded immediately.
Another small fire east of the city at West Twin caused by Saturday’s storm was listed at two-10ths of a hectare, with smaller fires in the Prince George-McBride corridor at Walker Creek, Kidd, Torpy River, Sinclair Mills and Dodd Creek. A new fire at Skugg Mountain, south of Mackenzie, also started on Saturday.
The Cutoff Creek fire near the Kenney Dam, about 60 kilometres south of Vanderhoof, remains the largest in the Prince George area at 9,500 ha. For perspective, one hectare is equal to 10,000 square metres, about the area inside of the 400-metre running track at Masich Place Stadium.
Fifty-five firefighters have been assigned to the [province’s effort to contain the blaze, focused on its southern flank. They have four helicopters dumping buckets of water and 18 pieces of heavy equipment to set up fire guards and assist with burn-back operations.
“They’ve got aerial support coming in as of today for the guard construction and burn operations and they’ve also got a structure-protection unit to work in the area,” said Nickel. “Fifteen individuals are in the structure-protection unit, so there’s three crews. They are the folks who set up sprinklers on structures, that kind of thing, just to protect any kind of infrastructure or structures.”
An evacuation order for the area of Rose Lake, close to Highway 16 between Houston and Burns Lake, was rescinded Sunday morning, but an evacuation alert remains in place, extending 10 km west of Rose Lake on both sides of the highway to include Bulkley Lake. Crews have been able to hold the 250 ha fire within established perimeters.
Southwest of Houston, the Nutli Lake fire covers 810 ha of forest, while the Poplar Mountain fire has grown to 130ha. Both were lightning-caused and discovered on July 7.
Firefighting crews continued to have success limiting the spread of the Chilako fire, 60 km south of Fraser Lake. It remained at about, 1,451ha, with 49 firefighters, one helicopter and eight pieces of heavy equipment involved.
“The Chilako fire is being held with the resources currently deployed to that site,” said Nickel. “The spread outside of what has been already been burned and the perimeter and the lines they’ve established is unlikely. They’ve established good control lines on that and were successful in cleaning up pockets of unburnt fuel on that fire and they’ve been able to get those control lines in.”
Two lightning-caused fires west of Williston Lake continue to grow in size. Discovered July 1, the Mount Porter fire is estimated at 6,345 ha and has resulted in an evacuation alert issued by the Regional District of Bulkley-Nechako for an area northwest of Germansen Landing and southeast of Manson Creek. Eight firefighters, two helicopters and five pieces of heavy equipment are tackling the interface fire, which threatens infrastructure and/or structures.
“There are some (firefighting) resources up there, certainly not as many as we’d like, but we’re doing what we can,” said Nickel.
The Klawi River fire west of Mackenzie covers 1,450 ha and continues to burn out of control but is not considered an interface fire. No BC Wildfire Service firefighting resources are focused on it.
The 1,000 ha Tentfire Creek fire southwest of Tumbler Ridge and a 200ha fire north of Monkman Provincial Park are still out of control. Two other out-of-control fires are in the Northwest Fire Centre jurisdiction near Cutoff Creek, including a 275ha fire at Grizzly Lake 66ha fire at Tatelkuz Lake, were caused by Saturday’s storm.
One of the largest fires in the Cariboo is the Churn Lake fire southwest of 100 Mile House, which started July 1 from lightning. It now covers 2.655ha. The Nazko River blaze southwest of Quesnel is still out of control, covering 303ha.
In the North Okanagan, an evacuation alert was lifted Sunday morning by the District of Coldsteam. A fire visible from Vernon near Becker Lake remains out of control.
There are now 301 active fires burning B.C. forests, 57 of which started over the past two days. The province is divided into six fire centres and the active fire total includes 57 in the Prince George Fire Centre (all of northeastern B.C.), 68 in the Cariboo, 162 in Kamloops, 60 in Southeast, six in Northwest and 8 in Coastal.
While Saturday’s lightning storm also brought periods of heavy rain, there’s no substantial rain in the forecast this week for the Central Interior.
The high temperature for Monday and Tuesday is expected to reach 29 C, cooling to a high of 25 C on Wednesday. Thursday will be mostly cloudy with a high of 22 C expected. Showers are in the forecast for Friday and Saturday with a predicted high of 21 C both days.
Environment Canada has issued another air quality advisory to warn the public of the potential for smoky skies over Prince George over the next two days.
The province continually updates its BC Wildfire Dashboard to provide the latest information. Call 1-800-663-5555 if you spot a wildfire.
