Drones called in
Unmanned aerial vehicles are helping crews get the upper hand on the Keremeos Creek wildfire, which settled down enough on Wednesday for officials to drop evacuation orders and alerts for approximately 250 properties.
A company under contract to the BC Wildfire Service has been doing night flights with specially equipped drones that can detect and target heat sources for ground crews to mop up.
The machines have been particularly useful along the Highway 3A corridor, which remains closed to traffic as a result of fire activity.
“There’s lots of rocky, deep-burning root systems (and) these drones are very sensitive. They can pick up even small amounts of heat so we can really confirm the work we’re doing out there,” said Mikhail Elsay, a spokesman for the BC Wildfire Service, during a Wednesday press conference.
Based on that work, the Regional District of Okanagan-Similkameen rescinded an evacuation order for 54 properties along Highway 3A from just north of Olalla to Sheep Creek Road.
The RDOS also rescinded an evacuation alert for 198 properties west of Highway 3A in the White Lake and Grand Oro roads area.
That still left 493 properties under evacuation order, including the community of Olalla and the Apex Mountain Resort, and another 909 properties, including the entire Village of Keremeos, under evacuation alert.
Tim Roberts, the RDOS director for Olalla, said he was inundated Wednesday with queries from constituents who are still out of their homes and unsure why.
“They don’t see any fire activity above them, behind them, and they’re not in a back-burn area,” said Roberts.
“So their question is: ‘Why not us? We’re well-irrigated, we’re not in a fire ground area. Why are we still under evacuation?’ That’s something I’ve been trying to field all day.”
In response to Roberts’s concerns, Elsay explained that in some places crews are still demobilizing equipment, such as water bladders, hoses and sprinkler systems, and need space to maneuver.
“That’s the work that’s being conducted today that hopefully we can wrap up so we can get people home as quickly as possible,” said Elsay.
The fire was pegged Wednesday at 6,712 hectares, down from 6,836 on Tuesday as a result of better mapping.
One home was confirmed lost to the fire last week and officials revealed Wednesday that an outbuilding near Olalla was destroyed Tuesday night.
The BC Wildfire Service had a total of 427 personnel, plus 17 helicopters and 44 pieces of heavy equipment in the fight, which is focused on the western flank of the fire between Green Mountain Road and Apex Mountain.
Despite the lifting of some orders and the abundance of resources, Elsay cautioned against an early victory lap.
“While we have been making good progress, this fire is still uncontained and out of control at this time, especially on the western flanks,” he said.
“It’s a very large fire footprint on the landscape so we’re working as hard as we can to get this fire under control, but it will be a considerable amount of time yet before we can fully wrap this thing.”
The cause of the fire is unknown and remains under investigation.
It’s the largest of seven wildfires of note currently burning in B.C.