The Donnie Creek wildfire could become the largest in the province’s history in the next few days.
It continues to burn at about 507-thousand hectares – the Plateau Wildfire near Williams Lake in 2017 burned through 545-thousand hectares.
The BC Wildfire Service says the Donnie Creek blaze was likely caused by lightning.
Fire Information Officer, Marg Drysdale doesn’t expect the blaze to let up anytime soon, even if the area does see some rain.
“We are going to be seeing more vigorous fire behaviour over the next couple of days and then there is some precipitation in the forecast. However, this fire is very large – some areas of the fire may accept precipitation and others may not see any.”
“If we do see any rain on the fire in any areas, it’s only going to be a day or two before it dries out and it stands up and its running rank five and six behaviour again.”
She added the fire is located within a fuel type that is very volatile and more planned ignitions are on the horizon to remove the fuel.
Crews are planning for ignition in the area of Truch as the fire remains about two kilometres from the Alaska Highway. All the plans and containment lines have been established according to Drysdale with a test burn scheduled for today (Thursday).
If that goes well, a burn will go ahead if the conditions and winds are right.
“The reason for doing this is to slow the fire’s intensity down and stop it from crossing the highway at that point.”
“In this situation, they do plan ignitions where they try and remove the fuel and a lot of structure protection.”
There are 83 fires burning in BC, 49 of which are in the Prince George Fire Centre – three are of note.
147 firefighters, 11 helicopters, 43 pieces of heavy equipment along with an incident management team and structure personnel are battling the blaze.
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