ll“Fire activity has picked up in the Clearwater Fire Zone,” according to zone spokesperson Vaughn McCaig. “Since last Thursday we've had 30 new fire starts.”
The 2013 fire season started off slowly in the fire zone. A few weeks ago that changed. The weather became warmer and drier, and a series of lighting storms moved through the area.
As of Monday there had been about 90 fires within the Clearwater Fire Zone, which makes this an above-average year.
Most of the fires have been in the northern half of the zone.Nearly a dozen fires have been located in remote parts of Wells Gray Park.Action on these “limited response” fires usually consists of keeping an eye on them to ensure the public is not endangered.
The only large fire in the zone was a 35 ha blaze on Manteau Creek in the North Thompson headwaters. A Type 2 crew took limited action against it about two weeks ago. The fire is mostly contained by an old fire that burned in 1998.
As of the beginning of this week the fire zone had three rappel crews, four Initial Attack crews plus locally-hired contract crews at work. One helicopter from Salmon Arm was working out of Blue River to support the rappel crews.
Three helicopters were working from the Yellowhead Helicopter hanger in Clearwater.
“The current forecast is for continued warm and dry, with the chance of afternoon lighting,” McCaig said. “We expect this trend to continue.”