In response to a request for assistance, Ontario this week is dispatching 200 Ministry of Natural Resources FireRangers, several fire behaviour analysts, and other staff to fight forest fires in British Columbia.
Of those, about 100 initial attack FireRangers and personnel will be departing from Northwestern Ontario on Tuesday and Wednesday, including a 20-person crew from the MNR office here.
While local FireRanger crews and staff have gone to B.C. before, this many usually aren’t sent at one time from one office but instead are more evenly drawn from various parts of the region, MNR fire operations supervisor Garry Harland said Tuesday morning.
But since there are so few fires burning here, the Fort Frances office can afford to dispatch half its complement of firefighters at one time, he added.
“It’s a great opportunity for us to show what we can do,” Harland remarked.
He noted local crews also are relieved because 20 MNR firefighters were scheduled to be laid off tomorrow due to the lack of fire activity here.
“And it looked like they would have been had they not been called to go out to B.C.,” Harland said.
“The crew people were happy. They like to be active. That’s what we hire them for,” he added.
These 20 firefighters, who were flying out of Dryden around 5 p.m. on Tuesday, will be joining another 80 drawn from elsewhere in the West Fire Region and another 100 from the East Fire Region.
They will be away for up 19 days.
Harland noted the Ontario crews are being flown to Abbotsford, but after that could be deployed to any of several locations where they can be of assistance.
There are more than 330 wildfires burning in B.C., most of which have been sparked by lightning and hot, dry weather.
About 500 residents in northwestern B.C. are on evacuation alert following weekend lightning strikes that sparked more than 100 new wildfires in the area.
One of those blazes—the Whitecap Creek Fire—covers about 1,600 ha and is still growing. It’s just four km from more than 200 homes in the Seton Portage area, which is 35 km west of the small town of Lillooet.
In June, local MNR firefighters and staff went to B.C., returning in mid-July. Some also have helped out in the Yukon and Alaska this summer.
In related news, only one new fire was reported in the West Fire Region on Monday. Sioux Lookout Fire #26 started in two piles of dead wood inside the burn of Sioux Lookout Fire #48 that occurred last year.
As of Tuesday morning, the fire was still active and 0.1 ha in size, but no problems were anticipated in extinguishing it.
(Fort Frances Daily Bulletin)
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
