SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Firefighters from the NWT are helping drive back the flames in Yukon and British Columbia as those areas of the country face a horrific fire season.

Yellowknifer got in contact with Roger Fraser, the manager of forests for the NWT Department of Environment and Natural Resources, who is providing expertise and helping to manage the inferno in Bella Coola, BC.

"(The fire) is fairly bad. The community of Bella Coola is evacuated. The fire is about a kilometre and a half from the community," said Fraser.

Fraser has spent most of his time in tents and lodging and has not been to the community, but said few people are still there other than the RCMP and hospital staff.

Roger Fraser: "Last night it took a run up over the mountain and the whole (mountainside) was lit up."

The flames can be seen from the community – it is located in a valley and the fire is on the mountainside.

The firefighters are trying to manage the flames on flat ground as the mountains are steep, making the battle difficult, according to Fraser.

"We got it down and we're just trying to fight the flanks," he said. "Last night it took a run up over the mountain and the whole (mountainside) was lit up.

"The people evacuated from here moved to communities farther out and they still could see it on the mountain."

Fraser said they are working long hours to keep the fire from crossing the line – usually from about 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Fraser arrived there on July 31 and is to be on site for about two weeks. There are seven people from the NWT aiding the cause in BC.

Janice Ziemann, forest officer with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, is travelling through the Yukon where there are 50 firefighters and nine on-scene managers from the NWT. Her role is to help make sure everything is going as it should for NWT firefighters – making sure they are being paid, treated right, and given full knowledge of their assignments, among other things.

"Our guys are working out of Watson Lake, Carmacks, and Ross River. The bulk of them are in Watson Lake," said Ziemann.

She's usually on the road every day – she was in Whitehorse when Yellowknifer contacted her on Thursday, she had just gotten there from Watson Lake, and she was flying to Carmacks that night.

The firefighters are on a variety of different jobs and spread out across the territory, so she has to be constantly on the move.

"They do groundwork, our firefighters – some of them are working on containing the fire, some are just on initial attack. That's when nothing is really going on so they just stand by and prepare to go," said Ziemann. "There's some that are just out there protecting values like cabins and stuff. They all have different assignments across the board."

The degrees of success that firefighters are having is hard to judge, said Ziemann. Each region they are in is very different and the states of the fires are always changing.

Right now things have slowed down a bit, though.

"It was really warm when we got here, then it cooled down but it's supposed to get warm again so things will probably pick up again," said Ziemann.

The Yukon had 60 active fires as of Thursday while B.C. had 212.