Fires persist despite rainfall
More than seven times the average number of fires currently burning
Meagan Leonard
Northern News Services
Wednesday, June 3, 2015
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Despite the smoky film that seemed to be hovering over Yellowknife this past weekend, fire officials say no communities are currently at risk.
A plume of smoke can be seen floating into Yellowknife from west of the city last Friday afternoon. - Walter Strong/NNSL photo |
Rainfall on Sunday evening and Monday morning helped ease the situation, but the fire count is still at 51 with 690 square kilometres burned. The 20-year average for this time of year is seven fires and 50 square kilometres burned, said Richard Olsen, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources manager of fire operations, during a press briefing Monday afternoon.
Fort Smith fire operations manager Frank Lepine says this is likely due to a long-term drought the territory continues to face.
"We're probably into year three of the drought ... affecting the North Slave, South Slave and Deh Cho regions," he said. "Because of that ... fires will burn deep and a fire that would normally take a crew a day or two to put out will take longer."
At this point, no external fire crews have had to be brought into the territory, but most of the resources have been employed at this point, supplemented with extra community firefighters, Olsen said.
Olsen says while the rain did manage to slow down some of the smaller fires, he expects the blazes to begin building again toward the weekend as dry winds and warm temperatures once again make their way across the territory. He says a lot more rain is needed to make any significant change.
"For anything to get to the really deep layers, we'd probably have to see an inch or two of rain - that's what will really make a difference, 25 millimetres or more," he said.
To put that into perspective, Monday's rainfall brought 3.4 millimetres of precipitation to Yellowknife.
Olsen says they are carefully watching a large fire 90 kilometres north of Fort Simpson that has the potential to damage cabins, homesteads and grave sites.
"No communities are being threatened at this time and the majority of the work in the other ones is limited to cabins and individual structures on the land," he said, adding they are now, in addition to Highway 3, monitoring a portion of Highway 1 east of Jean Marie River as large fires in that area begin to be a concern.
