Rain helps reduce forest fire hazard

The forest fire situation has cooled down, at least temporarily, following Monday night’s downpour here.
“It’s pretty hard to tell how widespread [the rainfall] was but except for the Quetico park area, the hazard is down to ‘moderate,’” Arlan Hahkala, sector response officer with the Ministry of Natural Resources here, said Tuesday morning.
He noted there was a 0.3-hectare lightning-caused blaze 16 km east of Lac La Croix on Monday night but a firefighting crew has since put it “out.”
MNR fire information officer Andrew Larmandi said Tuesday six more fires started in Quetico Provincial Park since Friday–five lightning-caused and one person-caused–but these are listed as “under control” or “out.”
“And we have one prescribed burn that is being observed in Quetico,” noted Hahkala. “It was only about 0.2 ha but it hasn’t shown any smoke for two weeks so it should be ‘out’ by now.”
Besides that, the fire situation has been quiet ever since crews attacked several lightning-caused fires following thunderstorms last weekend.
“We picked up a handful of fires then, [with] 0.3 ha was the largest. They were all small and posed no problems,” said Hahkala.
But as always, the weather isn’t predictable and fire crews could be busy again by this weekend.
“In the long-term, the moisture won’t amount to much so we’ll probably see the hazard rising in the next two days,” said Hahkala.
“We’re looking at a situation where some rainfall is not enough,” added Larmandi.
Fort Frances District has seen 20 fires since the season began April 1.
Looking at the rest of the West Fire Region, several small lightning-caused fires started over the weekend in Kenora, Thunder Bay, and Nipigon, but all have since been declared “out.”
Three fires in Red Lake and two blazes in Sioux Lookout continue to burn. But the MNR has chosen to simply observe them since they pose no threat to any values, said Larmandi.
The region has seen 233 fires since April, consuming 2,028.3 ha. Larmandi noted this number nearly matches last year’s total for the whole season.