Fire crews ease wildfire situation across Prince George Fire Centre

The evacuation alerts for the Mount Porter and Cutoff Creek wildfires have been rescinded.

The Mount Porter Blaze is no longer being considered a wildfire of note and is being held at about 13,659.00 hectares.

Meanwhile, the Cutoff Creek fire located southwest of Vanderhoof is still being considered a wildfire of note as it either poses a potential threat to public safety or remains highly visible.

“We do still have a good number of resources on Cutoff Creek, we’ve got just over 80 firefighters three helicopters, and nine pieces of heavy equipment working on that right now,” explained PGFC Spokesperson, Sharon Nickel.

Nickel says the evacuation alert for Cutoff Creek, a blaze that is now about 20,065.00 hectares, was initially more of a protective measure than an actual warning.

She adds the cooler weather and precipitation in both the Cutoff Creek and Mount Porter areas have helped mitigate the situations.

The Mount Porter blaze is being labeled as a ‘monitor only’ status as the fire recently saw plenty of precipitation and hasn’t grown much over the last couple of weeks.

Currently, 58 wildfires are blazing throughout the Prince George Fire Centre, the three other wildfires of note are the Grizzly Lake, Helmut/Kotcho Lake, and Tentfire Creek fires.

Nickel says that the fire danger rating for both Prince George and Vanderhoof remains at a moderate to high rating.

“I believe that is about normal to what we see for this time of year, I know that we have had very varied weather patterns this summer so far so certainly the danger ratings we saw in early July with the heatwave that was something more typical of what we’d see in August so that kind of high to the extreme is something more typical we would see this month but we also did receive those few days of heavy rains as well,” she explained.

Nickel is reminding residents to stay updated on local fire restrictions as they travel throughout BC over the next few weeks.

“Regarding the upcoming warming and drying trend, BC Wildfire Service will continue to action and monitor throughout our centre and we do encourage the public to continue to exercising caution with their backcountry activities and their use of fire,” she added.

Environment Canada predicts temperatures in Prince George and Vanderhoof will hover around the high 20’s to low 30’s over the next couple of days, followed by a chance of rainfall on Sunday.

Meanwhile, there are only four active wildfires blazing throughout the Northwest Fire Centre, including the Chief Louie Lake blaze, which is also considered as ‘of note’.