Losses this year almost equal last 7 years
Burning restrictions could be in effect heading into long weekend
With Nova Scotia’s two largest wildfires of the year fully contained, burned land in the province so far this year has almost matched the total of the seven previous years combined.
The Horsehoe Lake fire in Yarmouth County burned a total of 3,186 hectares, while the Chaplin fire near Upper Musquodoboit in Halifax County burned 52 hectares. The total as of Thursday afternoon for all 45 fires in the province this year was 3,290.
That compares to 3,316 hectares burned from 2015 to 2021. The last time Nova Scotia lost more than 1,000 hectares in one year was in 2008, when a total of 2,696 hectares burned. That was the year of the Lake Echo fire in HRM that burned close to 2,000 hectares.
Department of Natural Resources and Renewables fire prevention officer Kara Mccurdy said Thursday that the two large fires this year are both considered contained but not out. Crews continue to monitor both burned areas for hotspots. Crews used a helicopter earlier this week to remove the hundreds of rolls of hose from the Yarmouth fire that were stretched around and through the burned area.
“The good thing about fires at this time of year is that they don’t burn deep, so once they have them under control, they’re usually out, there’s no holdover fires,” Mccurdy said. “If this was August, they would probably be leaving some gear on the site for quite a while waiting to see if anything pops up.”
Another fire broke out Tuesday just south of the Yarmouth County fire, in the Musquash Lake area of Shelburne County, that burned about five hectares.
Mccurdy said the rain that fell this week was a little helpful, “but it’s not enough. We only had three millimetres of rain down in Upper Ohio, so it wasn’t enough to add moisture to a lot of the fuels. We certainly still have the same conditions (as before the rain) and the fire index is creeping back up.”
Some areas of Pictou County didn’t get any rain, and in places where it did fall in the province it has long since dried up, along with the ground.
On Thursday and Friday, burning was restricted to only after 7 p.m.
“We might see the map slip back to red (meaning no fires allowed at all) if the wind picks up in the next two days,” Mccurdy said.
With this being a long weekend, she said, people will be heading to cottages and camps, but if the all-day restrictions are in place there are no campfires and no fireworks allowed. Fireworks fall under the same guidelines as open fires.