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According to Karley Desrosier, Fire Information Officer for the Kiskatinaw River Wildfire, the next few days are going to be rough.
“Over the past couple of days, we’ve seen a significant increase in wildfire activity driven by winds from the west, both the southwest and the northwest at times,” says Desrosier. “So we’ve seen growth towards the community of Kelly Lake and the Alberta border.
“As it stands right now, conditions in the coming days will be dangerous. We are expecting significant wildfire growth as winds increase throughout the week. On Monday, we saw winds that would be considered moderate relative to what is coming tomorrow and Friday.”
On Monday the fire grew about five kilometres in one area and four kilometers in another. “As things get warmer, drier, and windier, we are going to see even greater wildfire growth. We expect winds to reach over fifty kilometers tomorrow, and on Friday, winds upwards of sixty kilometers an hour continuing to push this wildfire towards the east, especially the northeast.
The eastern front of the fire has been held about five km from Kelly Lake, and they are doing their best to prevent any movement towards the community, but, says Desrosiers, fighting the fire on the leading edge is hard. “The fire is not currently in the Kelly Lake community, but it is growing in that direction. This is a high-risk situation.”
She says BCWS crews are working hard on making sure the fire doesn’t escape the west flank of the fire, while a fleet of 11 helicopters work to bucket water to try and keep the fire from making any forward movement towards Kelly Lake.
“Unfortunately, with the fire behavior that we are expecting, we won’t be able to hold the fire with buckets alone, and certainly going to be much too risky and hazardous to put firefighters at the head of this. So they have been working on securing the west flank. That has been our number one priority is to keep it from moving any further west. But as it stands right now, the east flank is uncontained due to the amount of risk that we would be putting people in if they were to, to be working at the head of the fire.
“Structure protection units from across the province are here, supporting, structure defense in Kelly Lake. Structure protection, equipment has been established on structures throughout the community, and there are personnel that will remain on-site as this fire this fire situation does evolve to do active structure defense and, a tactical patrols for hotspots over the next, few days. I would say this is certainly a dynamic situation.”
They’ve also started to set up structural protection units around One Island Lake. “While the fire continues to move east and current forecasts do not indicate it will head directly north, the presence of both southerly and northerly wind components means movement toward the northeast and southwest remains possible. Given the strong winds and potential for increased fire behaviour later this week, these proactive steps are being taken to stay ahead of possible changes in fire behaviour or direction.”
In total, she says, there are 105 firefighters, more than 40 structure protection personnel, and heavy equipment, in addition to the helicopters.
Today, she says, crews were working on doing some ignition operations between the fire perimeter and Highway 52. “We want to avoid a larger, uncontained section of the fire moving towards the east. That’s our, top priority this morning. Between the middle finger and the northernmost finger that we are trying to hold it at Highway fifty two. Again, there was some spotting yesterday night. Crews were on it right away trying to catch those spots. But if we can hold it there, that’ll reduce the length of the flame front that is moving actively towards the east.”
She says while there have been a few major fires in the area, this fire is burning in a fairly open stand of forest.
“The Peavine Creek Fire is quite a bit further north of the perimeter as it stands right now. I don’t have that exact number on hand, but I would estimate in the twenty kilometer range from the fire. Ideally, it doesn’t get there, but certainly old burn scars do slow fires down. We also had the Bearhole Lake wildfire that is further southwest primarily. While the Bearhole Lake fire crossed the highway as well, it was primarily burning on the west side of highway 52.”
What’s holding the fire right now is at least in part the deciduous trees. “We have some pretty dead spruce stands, but there is a lot of deciduous stands in and around, especially Kelly Lake, so that will certainly help to slow fire progression. Once the fire get into rank five, even rank six behavior, the fuel type is less pertinent. But with that mixed fuel type, we are seeing slower fire progression in the areas with higher deciduous, content. Whereas in sections where we have just pure black spruce, that’s where we see the fire move quite a bit more aggressively.”
Ryan Kirkham is the Emergency Operations Centre Director for the Kiskatinaw River Wildfire for the PRRD. He says their goal is to support the communities impacted by the wildfires. “The RCMP and the ground search and rescue have helped facilitate the evacuation of residents in the impacted areas. We provide as much advance notice as possible on all our channels, including our website, Facebook, and through Northeast BC alerts, as well as emergency public alerts for news alerts or orders. The EOC and BC Wildfire urge residents from an abundance of caution to ensure everyone is out of the evacuation order area given the extreme fire behavior we’re being seen in the area.”
Despite the warning, there are still a number of people—about 17—who have refused to evacuate the Kelly Lake area.
He says so far, there are no reports of damage to any of the oil and gas infrastructure in the area.
In total, there are 110 civic addresses impacted by the evacuation order, with an additional 11 on alert.
Chelsea Mottishaw is the Emergency Social Services (ESS) Information Officer. She says so far about 55 people have registered with ESS, all from the Kelly Lake area.
While the evacuation has expanded to include One Island Lake, they have had nobody show up to the centre from that location. She says that’s because the homes there are mostly recreation properties and secondary homes for people.
They have a reception centre open at city hall in Dawson, which is open from 9 am to 1 pm for the next few days. “We are set to do renewals this weekend, and further information on open hours will come later on in the week. We also will be manning the phones. So anybody who has questions about ESS supports, can call 250-784-4681 between 8 am and 5 pm.
Desrosier says the next few days are looking grim. “There’s certainly a lot of area available for this fire to burn, and we expect the fire to reach the Alberta border both north and potentially south of Kelly Lake. There is a significant area of continuous fuel, where this fire could move. And the sections where there is the denser spruce, that will produce more ember cast, which will likely cause create spot fires ahead of the fire front itself in gusty winds.
“It’s tough to say exactly how much area will be impacted by this wildfire, but the growth could be significant. We did see the fire almost double under more mild winds than we forecast. This fire grew from three thousand hectares to sixty five hundred hectares, and that was with winds at five to fifteen kilometers an hour with gusts up to fifty. Now we’re expecting fifteen to twenty five kilometers an hour with gusts up to sixty. So twice as windy, less cloud cover, hotter temperatures, drier temperatures, and that growth could be, quite significant in the next two days especially.”
The fire is currently at 6532 ha.
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
