Progress continues to be made on the Bearhole Lake wildfire near Tumbler Ridge.
It remains over 63 hundred hectares in size but the Peace River Regional District lifted its Evacuation Order in the Kelly Lake area, downgrading it to an alert.
Fire Information Officer, Roslyn Johnson told Vista Radio the weather forecast makes firefighting efforts a little more promising.
“We will have settled conditions over the next three days which will allow crews to work at the edge of the fire and make some progress there. We do have quite a bit of work going on along Highway 57 just to contain that edge.”
“We do expect to see some increased fire behavior but we do have crews working on the ground as well as heavy equipment working on the containment of all of the flanks of the fire.”
Ignition control operations were halted over the past two days due to unfavorable conditions.
Bearhole Lake is one of two fires of note within the Prince George Fire Centre – the other is the Battleship Mountain blaze west of Hudson’s Hope, which is over 13 thousand hectares in size.
In relation to Battleship Mountain, the PRRD still has an active Evacuation Order within Electoral Area E:
- North shore of Williston Lake
- Table Creek south to Dowling Creek (8km west of the WAC Bennett Dam, 40km Johnson FSR)
- Southwest following Dowling Creek to the intersection of McAllister Creek
- West to approximately 10km West of Peck Creek
- North to Williston Lake
When it comes to the wildfire season as a whole within the PGFC, 2022 has been a lot quieter compared with last year.
On this date in 2021, the local fire centre had 275 fires while this year that number is down to 195 blazes.
As of now, 32 wildfires are currently active within the Prince George Fire Centre.