While Canadian forest management officials reported a slower, less dramatic start to this year’s wildfire season, responders in the town of Fort Nelson, British Columbia were preparing for a “last stand” against a blaze that more than doubled in size on Sunday and was just 1½ kilometres from the edge of town at last report.
The Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre was reporting about 90 fires across country as of last Thursday, 12 of them burning out of control out of control, while warning that “the risk of hot, dry weather and severe fires remains high,” The Canadian Press reported. On the same day last year, 200 blazes were already in progress, most of them in Alberta, with 50 of them out of control.
“At the same time last year the situation was quite different,” Jean-François Duperré, director of emergency planning for the government operations centre at Public Safety Canada, said last week.
But days later, high winds were pushing the Parker Lake wildfire toward the town of Fort Nelson and the Fort Nelson First Nation, CBC reports.
“The forecast that I hear is that we’re going to get a westerly flow which could bring the fire closer to the community if it gets up to what it was like on Friday,” Mayor Rob Fraser of the Northern Rockies Regional Municipality said Monday morning. “We’re trying to keep the fire away from the high fuel areas, so it’s all hands on deck.”
This is an evolving story -- and will be for the coming months -- but you can find our latest roundup here.