REGINA - It is an increasingly active and concerning fire situation in the North, with evacuations and several road closures in effect.
Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency has provided its latest update on what is turning into an unusually early wildfire season.
Steve Roberts, SPSA Vice President of Operations, reported that Saskatchewan has 205 wildfires year to date, with 21 of those currently active. The total is significantly higher than last year’s 165 and well above the five-year average of 124.
“So in summary, a very busy and aggressive spring wildfire season facing the province,” Roberts said.
“We are currently under a weather system that is not favoured to wildfire suppression activities so what we're experiencing is high daytime temperatures and warm nighttime temperatures allowing fire activity to continue throughout the day and often into the evening. Humidities are low and our winds have actually been fairly strong which are seeing these fires move significant distances overnight and throughout the day.”
The fires of note right now are as follows:
The SHOE Fire, located near Lower Fishing Lake and Narrow Hills Provincial Park, is the largest fire in the province right now. That fire now contains all of the Shoe Fire and the Camp Fire, which have grown to merge into a single fire. The size is 216,000 hectares and it is not contained.
Roberts said that on this fire they already had two cabins, 23 campers and four pieces of infrastructure including a kitchen, bunkhouse, equipment shack and truck in their own compound impacted by this fire. They also had to evacuate their entire fire response team of 280 people to move them out of the way of this fire activity.
There is also the JAYSMITH Fire northeast of Missinippi, currently 18,000 hectares in size. This fire is near the highway north of La Ronge, and the community of Brabant Lake is under threat from this fire.
The PISEW Fire is located west of La Ronge and currently listed at 51,000 hectares. Roberts said they have confirmed at least one structure loss, and three more are suspected but have yet to be confirmed.
The WOLF Fire west of Denare Beach currently is threatening the McIlveena Mine Aite. Roberts said values protection activities have taken place to secure the mine site. Current size of the fire is 6,400 hectares and it is not contained.
Another fire of note is the PELICAN2 fires northeast of Pelican Narrows near the town site, which is 850 hectares in size. Roberts said four pieces of heavy equipment under contract with SaskPower have been lost to this fire.
Also, there is the CLUB Fire that is north of Creighton, which is not yet contained.
In addition is a fire on the west side where eight cabins were confirmed lost on that fire earlier this season.
New fires of note include the FIREDITCH2 fire which is on Highway 2 north of La Ronge, current size 80 hectares and adjacent to the highway.
There is also the CANOE fire, which erupted overnight and is threatening the community of Candle Lake.
“All of these fires are currently being actioned by ground assets, air assets, heavy equipment assets to contain these fires and prevent damage and impact to values of risk.”
There are also several active evacuations organized by local communities and these include the following:
The resort subdivision of Whelan Bay, 12 individuals evacuated;
Pelican Narrows, 1,700 people evacuated. Roberts said the current direction is they are seeking a full evacuation of that community and changing their evacuation order;
Lower Fishing Lake, where 280 staff and contracting support people were evacuated due to the fire to the Candle Lake Provincial Park. Roberts said they will be relocated to a new fire administration area shortly to continue efforts on that large fire;
Brabant Lake, 27 individuals have been evacuated;
Ball Lake, 380 residents have been evacuated from that location;Little Bear Lake Subdivision, two individuals have been evacuated.
The Foran Mining Company has evacuated 600 individuals;
East Trout Lake Subdivision has evacuated the subdivision and the entire campground;
Narrow Hills Provincial Park, three permanent residents have been evacuated;
And in Piprell Lake, four individuals have been evacuated.
Highway corridors in Saskatchewan have also been impacted and there are closures in place for Highways 135, 910, 106, 120, 913, and 912. Those are either closed intermittently or completely at this time; people are asked to check Highway Hotline.
Roberts said they have “a very active, busy fire season” and the province will “continue and expand the provincial fire ban all the way to the northern border of Saskatchewan to prevent any further human-caused fires.”
Roberts also noted that even though there is a large number of fires, it was “important to note almost every single one of those fires was a human-caused fire start. It could have been prevented.”
“So diligence and the need for things like the fire ban that's in place and cautionary activities by people that are either working, such as the timber industry which is on shutdown now because of the extreme fire conditions, all are going to support us by not creating new fires in addition to the ones we already have.”
The province has gotten some additional resources to address the fires. Roberts said the state of Alaska has sent an aircraft tankers that has been in use for a couple weeks and continue into the near future, while Quebec has loaned two water-bombing aircraft.
The province has also made requests through inter-agency partners for fire crews, fire equipment and more aircraft.
These are unusual conditions for the province. Roberts said that for the month of May, “we have probably not seen a fire season with as much impact and activity in the last couple of decades this early.”
He said some of these large fires will take the entire season to be monitored before they are completely out. The other concern is that “at some point, we will start to see lightning.”
“On the positive note, some of those lightning fires, of course, will be coming with rain, which we haven't seen in some time and would be really appreciative at this point in time,” Roberts said.
As for the evacuations, it was noted it would be the local jurisdictions that make the decisions not only of an evacuation order, but who it pertains to — whether it is their high-risk individuals, all of their individuals, or whether those orders may actually be voluntary.
It is not certain how many evacuation orders there are in northern Saskatchewan, as there could be others outside the jurisdiction of the province.
Regarding the situation in Candle Lake, Marlo Pritchard, President of SPSA, said they have been working with the community.
He was asked about concerns about red tape and permits getting in the way of efforts by local residents to build a fire break around that community. Pritchard responded that what it comes down to is that the community is not under imminent threat and not under an emergency.
“What we do see, at least in the SHOE fire at this point in time, is that the winds are favourable. It's pushing it away from the community, or keeping it away from the community. We have not seen significant growth in the last few days, and it's still around 27 km away from the community. But really what we want to say is that we're going to continue to work with Candle Lake, and with our mitigation specialists, and others within SPSA, and see if we can get a mitigation plan that they're looking for.”
As for resources to fight the fires, Roberts acknowledged that provincial resources are "indeed stretched, and it is one of the reasons we've gone to our Canadian partners and our other mutual aid partners to get more resources.”
Roberts also noted that of the fire crews, what he is hearing is “they're tired. Many of them are on their third shift on the fire line. That's why we're rotating them to get them their days of rest.“
“Unfortunately for many of these folks is, in this condition, we lose as often as we win on any given day. Successes today are erased tomorrow. But that's a function of the fire behaviour and the weather we're in right now. In addition to that, we know we will hear and they will continue to hear is, that they haven't done enough or they haven't provided enough, which is one of the issues they have to deal with.”
He noted crews are putting in 16-hour days.
“So something to consider, you know, third hand for folks is these folks are putting in 110 per cent, without a doubt. They're doing the right things, they're keeping people safe, they're keeping themselves safe. So when you consider the magnitude of these fires and what's going on, public safety and staff safety is our number one goal and we continue to keep that right front and centre.”
