The Chronicle Herald (Provincial)
Progress continues to be made on Yarmouth County wildfire
Fire crews continued to gain the upper hand on a wildfire Friday that has been burning in the Yarmouth County interior since Monday.
The Department of Natural Resources and Renewables said on the afternoon of May 13 that the Horseshoe Lake fire was about 70 percent contained and had not seen much growth in the past couple of days from the 3,100-or-so hectares it has covered.
There was also no concern on Friday that the fire would reach communities and residences.
“The wind has certainly dropped in speed, but it’s also changed direction,” said Paul Schnurr, the fire's incident commander, speaking from the department's depot in Tusket, Yarmouth County.
“Where the fire was burning towards Quinan at the beginning of the week, the winds have come around completely in the opposite direction so nothing is pushing towards Quinan at this time.”
Schnurr also said there hadn’t been many flare-ups reported by those on the ground, although it was being monitored.
“There are areas where we’re trying to widen the perimetre and stop the spread,” he said. "Fires are kind of stubborn and hiding and they’ll start to show up.”
"We’re probably about 70 percent contained,” he added. “Any flare-ups are occurring along the edge, so the movement of the overall perimetre is fairly small because we’re able to jump on those fires quickly and extinguish any hot spots that appear.”
WATER BOMBER REASSIGNED
A water bomber from Newfoundland and Labrador that had been in Yarmouth since Tuesday was reassigned midway through the day on Friday to assist with a forest fire that had broken out near Upper Musquodoboit.
The CL-415 water bomber hadn’t been used much in the past couple of days in Yarmouth County because the fire was being fought more from the ground as opposed to the air. The reason for that was the safety of the ground crews.
“It’s tonnes of water that gets dropped out of the sky. It can snap off fairly large trees and break them off, so it’s just not safe to have people working in the same area where they’re dropping water,” Schnurr explained.
“You really have to choose between one or the other and what is going to be the most effective thing,” he said. “On Tuesday, the fire was too intense to put people on it, they just couldn’t do anything. Then the weather changed so we could get people on the ground. After that we made the choice, it was better to have the people on the ground and work with that, because it was a less intense fire.”
DRY CONDITIONS
About 40 department personnel attended the scene between the fire scene and the command centre. Two department helicopters were still shuttling supplies and crews to and from the fire scene on Friday, while also monitoring and mapping the situation. The helicopters have also done water drops with buckets during the week where and when needed.
The daily provincial burn restrictions map updated on Friday prohibited burning anywhere in the province.
The Department of Natural Resources and Renewables says people may think this isn’t a dangerous time for wildfires because temperatures aren’t as hot as during the summer — which can also be a time of drought conditions too — but the spring is indeed a very hazardous time for wildfires.
“This is actually a deceiving time for people because what is available to burn, like dead grass, takes about four hours for it to dry out. So we could have rain in the morning and grass by the afternoon available to burn,” Schnurr said.