Darren Campbell
Northern News Services

NNSL (Aug 05/98) - A thunder and lightning storm that hit Tuesday morning has not caused any new fires in the Yellowknife area.

Ernie Campbell, the department of renewable resources duty officer for the North Slave region, said after flying around the area Tuesday no new fires were spotted as of press time.

And that is good news for the department and fire crews fighting the 145,000 hectare Tibbitt Lake fire northeast of the city.

Campbell said as crews work on maintaining control lines already set up to prevent that fire from spreading to Prelude Lake, they really don't need any new ones starting up.

"We're still re-enforcing lines and doing what we can to hold them," said Campbell. "We hope we don't get any more starts (of fires)."

After some cool weather and high humidity lately, the weekend's hot weather has brought the fire danger rating up to extreme once again.

He said smoke around Prelude Lake on Monday was coming from control lines in the area.

Campbell added that a burnout operation north of Sparrow Lake to remove unburned forest fuel from between the control lines and the fire's perimeter also went well.

Campbell said they have about 50 people working on the fire right now, cutting the firefighting effort in half from the 100 firefighters working on the fire in late July.

"We did that because some guys were putting in some very long hours and long days," said Campbell. "If you keep them out longer than 14 days, you're just asking for an accident."

Forestry officials are still asking the public to not light any open fires in the forested area. But if a fire is necessary they are asking that it be kept under control at all times and that it is completely out before leaving the site.

Any new fires would add to an already busy fire season. This year there have been 84 forest fires in the North Slave region, which includes Yellowknife, Rae Lakes, Wha Ti, and Rae-Edzo.

There have been 337 fires this year in the entire Western Arctic which have burned a total of 808,420 hectares.