While much of BC and Alberta burned around Tumbler Ridge, there were no wildfires in the Tumbler Ridge area, outside of the Bearhole Lake fire from last year, which is still being monitored in case any hot spots—buried deep in the duff—spark up again.
That changed as of May 22, when lightning sparked a fire near Babcock Falls.
Mackenzie Spenrath was just starting out on a hike to Babcock Falls when he saw a flash of light. “It was quite cloudy, but it wasn’t raining or anything,” says the Dawson Creek resident. “But, as soon as we started the hike, I saw a flash overhead and then less than a second later I heard a huge boom, it was some of the loudest lightning I’ve ever heard. So I knew it was pretty close and it wasn’t raining at the time. So it was obviously a dry strike, which was very bad.”
But, there was no sign of fire at the time, so they kept walking. “We heard thunder a few more times after that, and then it eventually started raining off and on. It was a bit hard at some points, we just pressed through to the falls.”
The group spent some time around the falls, Spenrath taking pictures of Babcock. “We were at the falls for maybe half an hour or so, and then we started to head back. It’s not a very long hike, so we were probably out for maybe an hour and a half or so.”
While they were walking back, they heard a helicopter and thought it was checking out the area for possible fire, but when they got back to their car, they could clearly see smoke rising from the Peace River Coal Minesite. “There was smoke billowing out from the trees halfway up a nearby mountain. We saw the helicopter flying over, I saw it was bucketing water. I watched it for at least half an hour or so, it was just doing runs, dropping water on the burn, and going to whatever lake they grabbed the water from and coming back. I watched it do probably ten trips.”
Spenrath says while the fire wasn’t out when they finally left, it didn’t seem to be getting worse.
“The smoke wasn’t getting any more intense, but I couldn’t tell exactly. I couldn’t see the base of the fire at all, because it was kind of behind a hill or a ridge or something. So I could only see the smoke coming out, but it seemed like they were doing a pretty good job containing it.”
While the fire was still rated as out of control on Sunday night, by Monday morning, it had been downgraded to Being Held, which means it is not expected to spread and is not actively being supressed, with rain in the area.
Spenrath says they only noticed the fire when they got back to the car, so hadn’t reported it. “But they got to it real quick. The fire was very close to the Trend mine, near some buildings. I guess someone was working there and called it in.”
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
