‘Great news’: Rain, cooler temps have helped B.C. wildfire fight, officials say

The B.C. Wildfire Service says the recent rain and cooler temperatures have helped the fires burning in the province.

“What’s been happening over the last four days is we’ve had approximately 36 mm of rainfall in the Mount Underwood area, which has been great news for us,” Julia Caranci, fire information officer with the B.C. Wildfire Service said.

“It has lowered fire behaviour down to what we call mainly rank one. So that is a smouldering ground fire without any open flame and we do have some pockets of rank two, which is a surface fire with some open flame.”

The Mount Underwood fire, burning on Vancouver Island near Port Alberni, is now 3,671 hectares in size.

There are two evacuation orders and three evacuation alerts currently in effect for this fire.

Caranci said this has allowed crews to gain an entry point to the massive fire on the northwest corner, which means crews can make progress in that previously unreachable flank.

However, after some rain expected on Tuesday, the warming and drying period is expected to return but not at the same intensity, Caranci said.

“So when this fire started on August the 11th, we had had six weeks of extremely hot and dry summer temperatures and almost no rain,” she added.

“Where we’re at now is we’ve had rain recently, we’re having rain tomorrow and while we may see some fire behaviour and activity pick up over the next few days, if that warming and drying continues we’re also going into a shift in conditions.

“We’re going into more fall-like patterns — so shorter days, longer nights, higher relative humidity overall and better overnight recoveries — so we are just not likely to see that same type of fire behaviour and activity that we saw in the early days of that fire.”

There are 160 firefighters assigned to the Mount Underwood fire, eight structure protection personnel, 10 helicopters, 21 pieces of heavy equipment and 10 danger tree fallers, along with an incident management team.

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Bucketing helicopters are also working on the flames from above.

Caranci also said that night vision technology is available if crews need it.

“I just want to say I understand that these two wildfires, the Wesley Ridge and Mount Underwood (both on Vancouver Island), were both fairly close together in time and have both been impactful incidents to the surrounding communities,” she added.

“But the compassion and the caring we’ve received and the support we’ve received is amazing so I just wanna say how much the B.C. Wildfire Service appreciates the support from the community as we continue to respond to both of these incidents.”

There are currently 76 wildfires burning in B.C., with the Mount Underwood wildfire listed as a wildfire of note.

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