Quesnel on evacuation alert

The chair of the Bulkley-Nechako regional district board has had a long week and expects the next one will not be any better, as more evacuation orders and alerts are in effect for an area of north-central B.C. nearly surrounded by forest fires.

“I’ve had better weeks,” Bill Miller chuckled softly over the phone from Burns Lake.

The 35-kilometre stretch of land under evacuation order is west of Fort St. James, in a mostly rural area, while an expanded evacuation alert includes several properties near the district municipality ’s western edge.

Miller said they have been lucky with the most recent evacuation area expansion, as no properties or families in the area have been forced out in a zone most made up of camping and recreational sites.

However, he said if the fires continue to burn eastward, it will begin to affect residents in Fort St. James, and they need to be prepared to leave immediately if the alert is upgraded to an order in the next three to five days.

“The alert has expanded significantly to cover the community of Fort St. James and some other First Nations communities as well,” said Miller.

The wildfire burning near Shovel Lake that prompted the evacuation orders has grown to roughly 300 square kilometres and is one of the largest wildfires in the province, though fire information officer Marg Drysdale of the B.C. Wildfire Service said the 2017 fire season had fewer but larger blazes to deal with.

“We had fires last season which were well over 100,000 hectares (1,000 square kilometres),” said Drysdale from the scene of the fire.

Drysdale said 73 firefighters and 53 pieces of heavy equipment, including bulldozers and water tankers, were working to keep the fire from spreading toward Vanderhoof and Fort St. James.

B.C. Wildfire Service chief information officer Kevin Skrepnik said there were nearly 600 blazes burning across the province, though the southern portion of the province did receive some rain over the weekend.

The northern part of the province was not so lucky.

“Unfortunately, we are not seeing a lot of relief in sight from the weather,” Skrepnik said.

Residents in and around the western edge of Quesnel were prepared to leave at a moment’s notice as wildfires raged on nearby and flames from blazes northwest forced almost 90 people from their homes on the weekend.

Emily Epp of the Cariboo Regional District said helicopter evacuations were needed for at least four families on Saturday when the wildfire cut off access to a forestry service road.

“It is a very rural and remote area so we estimate there’s about 90 residents in that area,” she said.

Several hours later, a new evacuation alert was added for nearly 2,000 more residents, about an hour’s drive west of Quesnel.

Sylvain Gauthier, Quesnel’s fire chief, said 2,500 to 2,700 residents in western Quesnel are already under an alert as they prepare for a possible city-wide evacuation.

The fire burning near the western part of Quesnel is about 31 square kilometres in size.

The alert has expanded significantly to cover ... Fort St. James and some other First Nations communities.