Over the past 48 hours, nine new fire starts have been recorded within the Prince George Fire Centre.
Fire Information Officer, Sharon Nickel told MyPGNow.com most of them are of the smaller variety.
“The majority of those were under one hectare in size and actually, two are already extinguished and one is being held. Of the six that do remain out of control from those new starts, the largest is 178 hectares and three of those are in a remote portion of the Fort Nelson Zone.”
Of the new blazes, one of the more noteworthy ones is the Tupper Creek blaze located 37 kilometres south of Dawson Creek. It is 120 hectares in size and has resulted in an Evacuation Alert being issued by the Peace River Regional District.
One unit crew, an initial attack crew and two helicopters are on site.
In addition, a new fire in the Germansen Landing area within the Mackenzie zone is out of control despite being 0.5 hectare in size.
Even with a cooling front on the horizon, a spike in fire activity is expected in the coming days according to Nickel.
“Knowing that we are coming through this dry and hot period, as lightning comes through we do have patrols set up whether that is aerial or ground personnel to areas where we know lightning has come through. There is kind of a constant look out shall we say of new starts and they are looking for any beginnings of smoke columns.”
“We do expect to see an increase in fire activity whether that is on existing incidents where activity might pick up and there is potential for more smoke or flames and the potential for growth of course. Or if it’s those new starts coming through given we are not seeing any precipitation coming through, any lightning that comes will be dry lightning.”
Currently, there are 179 ground personnel located in the Fort Nelson Zone – they are being supported by 25 helicopters and four pieces of heavy equipment. In Fort Saint John, there are 176 crew members on site supported by 22 helicopters.
There are currently 92 active wildfires burning in the Prince George Fire Centre.
As of April 1st, nearly 545-thousand hectares have burned in our area.
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