Update 7, August 15, 8 pm. In the last 48 hours, the Bearhole Lake fire has seen significant growth. The good news is the wind is pushing it east, away from town. One fire is no longer considered active bringing us back to six, three of which are active and considered out of control.
Update 6: it’s wiiiindy. Not sure what is winning the battle; the wind or the rain we got earlier.
Update 5: Another human caused fire.
Update 4: I tried to upload a new picture, which means that all my previous updates didn’t update. Sorry about that.
Update 3: tentfire fire has forced the closure of kinuseo falls road at km 3. However, the road through the pine pass is now open.
Update 2: Tentfire Creek was smoking like Grandma Ernst back in the 70s this afternoon, while the new Ridgeview Creek fire looked like an atomic bomb, even though it is still listed at 8 ha. Oh, and fire near Pine Lemoray has closed the pine pass.
Over the last 48 hours, the Bearhole Lake fire has made a major run, going from “Being held” and at a size of 0.01 ha to 2757 ha. We are still waiting to hear back from BCWS to confirm the size, but as of Friday, August 13, there was no smoke visible on the satellite. Now, it has grown to nearly as big as the Tentfire Creek fire.
The fire started about 25 km east of town, and has burned its way away from town. The fire has traveled about 10 km east, past Blackhawk Lake.
It’s one of three large fires in the Tumbler Ridge area. We’ll talk about the other two in a moment, but there has been another new fire in the Tumbler Ridge area, this one human started. A few weeks ago, there was some discussion online about the Redwillow open camp, which was abandoned a few years back and is a right royal mess.
As part of that, someone mentioned a spontaneous combustion in the middle of winter would go a long ways towards dealing with the problem.
It was a joke, but it seems like someone might have failed to grasp that, as someone apparently lit the place on fire on Saturday.
We have yet to hear what damage was done, but the fire is listed at 2.5 ha and is now listed as under control.
The Ridgeline Creek fire, which was discovered on August 8, has apparently seen exponential growth, despite still being listed as 8 ha on the BC Wildfire dashboard, though it is now large enough to be seen on the satellites.
BC Wildfire Service is so worried about its potential to grow, the area around the fire has been closed to non-essential travel and visitation.
The fire is burning near Red Deer Creek, more than 70 km from Tumbler Ridge, but in an area that has seen a number of major wildfires over the last twenty years, and in an area where the fire danger is high and moving towards extreme. However, there appears to have been significant rain in the area on Sunday.
Slightly closer to town, the Hook Creek fire has basically burned itself out. According to Fire Chief Dustin Curry, the fire wound up running into the Murray River, so couldn’t advance forward, and was trapped by the rocky topography of the region. While a long stint of hot weather and high winds could cause the fire to flare up, it is currently listed as being held. That fire burned about 258 ha of forest, including the trees above Kinuseo Falls, across from the viewpoint. That fire is about 40 km from Tumbler Ridge in a straight line.
Despite the fire not currently being active, Monkman Park remains closed. More on that later.
Two small fires started near Gwillim Lake after a dramatic thunderstorm blew through the region on August 5. Both have now been removed from the Fire Map. Those fires were 40 km from town, north of Highway 29 to Chetwynd.
Also north of Tumbler Ridge, about 50 km from town and farther west, the 10 ha fire near Boulder Lake has seen no significant change in the last few weeks. It is still 10 ha, and is now considered under control.
Warm weather and winds have caused the Tentfire Creek fire to become active again along its southwestern edge, which is the side farthest away from town.
The main front of the fire has moved into the valley slightly north of the Murray River valley, between Teck’s old Quintette Mine and Conuma’s new mine being developed at Mount Hermann. Crews have been working to force the fire a little farther north, towards the Teck minesite as there is no fuel for the fire to burn there. “The world’s largest fire break,” says one employee.
The fire continues to burn in the Murray River valley as well, though crews have been doing some back burning to try and control it. Most of the new smoke is coming from an active front on the side of the fire farthest away from town.
This activity means the fire is moving closer to the Kinuseo Falls Road, which has lead to the road being closed at km 4.
BC Wildfire spend much of July constructing guards on the Tentfire Creek fire, and, on July 30 did a major ignition to reduce the amount of fuel the fire had and force it into a bottleneck between the guards and the mine.
That brings the fire to within about 17 km of town, and the prevailing winds have been pushing it almost straight towards Tumbler Ridge. While the fire managed to get past the guards, crews were able to extinguish that fire before it grew to more than 2 ha. The fire did make some forward progress, but precipitation overnight helped knock it down again.
According to BCWS, “crews are continuing to work along the fire guard near Mast Road. Aviation resources have not been able to assist with fire suppression operations today due to limited visibility causing unsafe flight conditions. Conditions are being constantly monitored and if they improve, aviation resources will return to actioning this fire.”
While there is a chance the fire could jump the guards again, the area that lies between the fire and town has seen lots of disturbance, and the chance of it making it past all the clearcuts, roads and well sites is slim.
Even if it does manage to get through that, it would still have to cross the Murray River and the Highway.
The fire has grown to about 2800 ha in the last few days, up from 2400 ha.
There are now 21 firefighters on the blaze, supported by three helicopters and three pieces of heavy equipment.
The other fires that have started in the area, including a fire about 5 km from town, are now considered out. There have been 17 fires within 100 km of town since April.
Provincially, there have been 1,486 fires. That’s more than the ten year average of 1352, though nowhere near the 3064 fires that happened in 2009. 660,071 ha of area has burned, and while most of the fires are out, there are still 268 actively burning.
The weather forecast for the next few days should see seasonal temperatures, and some precipitation with more expected by the weekend.
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
