A fire ban is in place for the entire Prince George Fire Centre, which covers a 31 million hectare area in the northeast part of the province and new bans took effect Thursday in the Cassiar and Bulkley Valley zones.
By noon Friday a campfire ban will extend into Southern Interior and Southwest Fire Centres, which will leave only two zones in the entire province (one in Southeast, one in Northwest) where campfires are still allowed. Even then, the size of controlled fires must not exceed a half-metre.
Fires northwest of Prince George continue to burn out of control, although none are threatening any human population concentrations.
Lightning strikes over the weekend sparked several new fires, one of which is in the Prince George Fire Zone, about 75 km northeast of Prince George close to Stuart River Provincial Park and Margaret Lake.
The Tsah Creek fire, 24 km south of Fort St. James, which was also discovered Wednesday, covers 50 ha on the west side of Highway 27 along the Bear Cub Forest Service Road.
“Right now the highway is still open and there is potential to impact the highway,” said Prince George Fire Centre information officer Sharon Nickel.
“We’re still experiencing pretty high drought conditions and with the current weather conditions we’re seeing right now that has resulted in increased fire activity on the established incidents that we have but it also proving to be challenging for our response on new incidents we have."
Nickel said 102 firefighters from Mexico arrived Wednesday and more from the United States are coming later this week. To date, the U.S. has sent 170 firefighters, including 100 smoke jumpers, 40 ground crew workers, 16 agency representatives/officers and a 14-person incident team of management personnel.
The Katsberg Creek fire east of Driftwood Creek, 305 km northwest of the city, continues to burn out of control and has grown to 2,856 ha. The Takla First Nation issued an evacuation order for the area last week.
The Big Creek fire in Omineca Provincial Park 120 km northwest of Mackenzie now covers 43,263 ha.
The Nation River west of Williston Lake is burning an area of 11,308 ha. Those two fires are the source of much of the smoke now affecting the Omineca/Fort St. James region.
The Donnie Creek fire north of Fort St. John continues to be the most problematic in the Prince George Fire Centre.
The wildfire smoke forecasting website, FireSmoke.ca, predicts smoke in the Prince George airshed will remain at the lightest end of the scale (between 1 and 10 parts per million of fine particulate matter) for today and Friday.
