Above photo: Fire G72185 started across the Murray River from Gwillim Lake Provincial Park, but cooler weather and BC Wildfire crews held it at three hectare. While the fire is not considered completely out, it is being held.
It grew to 73 ha, but the fire on Cowmoose Mountain is now considered being held. However, with warmer weather in the forecast, the fire is not yet considered out.
It is one of two fires that have started or been burning in the month of August.
The other fire that has been burning in the area is just east of the Murray River, across the river from Gwillim Provincial Park. That fire is considered under control, never growing much past 3 ha.
Crews were out working on that fire earlier this month.
A small fire deep in the heart of Monkman Provincial Park is now considered out. That fire topped out at about 3.5 ha.
The biggest wildfire in the area managed to get to 97 ha, but is now considered under control. That one is near Tupper, close to the BC Alberta boundary.
There are currently 291 fires burning across the province, none of which are considered fires of note. While the Corya Creek fire, west of Mauricetown on Highway 16 in the Northwest, and the Shetland Creek fire south of Cache Creek west of Highway 1 in the Kamloops Fire Centre were considered fires of note earlier in the month, they have both been downgraded
Of the 291 fires burning, nearly half—43 percent—are under control, while only 27 percent are still out of control. Only six percent of those fires were known to be started by people.
Still, there are six active evacuation orders and ten alerts.
Of those fires, 17, or about six percent are known to be caused by humans, while 13 more (about four percent) are of unknown causes. The remaining fires were presumably caused by lightning.
In total, there have been about 15 fires east of the Continental Divide and south of Highway 97 this year, many of them less than one hectare.
While the fire season is far from over (the Bearhole Fire in 2022 started in September), this year has seen fewer and smaller wildfires than the last number of years, at least in this area.
Provincially, it is a different story. The total number of hectares burned just creeped up over the one million mark, making this the fourth worst year on record after 2023, 2018 and 2017. It also means that the five worst wildfire years are all within the last decade.
For more details on wildfires in our area, keep an eye on www.tumblerridgelines.com, or visit bcwildfire.ca.
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
