The Regional District of Central Kootenay and BC Wildfire Service held a meeting in Castlegar this week with a look at the wildfire situation. Lowell Stevenson is with the Incident Management Team for the Syringa Complex of Wildfires. He discussed the work happening on the Syringa Creek Wildfire. “We also put in a retardant line on the east of Syringa Creek and what that does for us, it allows us to stop the advancement of the fire or at least stall it for a while in an area where we’re having trouble getting crews in because of the terrain, so it’s really steep in the creek. Today, we followed that up with helicopter bucketing and tried to finish off that corner of the fire back to where our crews could actually do work and put a guard in.”
In regards to the Bulldog Mountain Wildfire, he says there’s a good guard on the east side of the fire but there are still concerns around the north west corner. “On the Renata side, in the northwest corner, there’s an area there that’s about 300 hectares that’s unburnt. It’s very flammable, there’s a lot of fuel there and it’s a real issue.” There is still an evacuation order in effect for the area northwest of Brooklyn, including Renata.
Stevenson says that area didn’t receive much rain at all on Sunday. The good news is the smoke has cleared which allows fixed wing aircraft to resume flying.
The Bulldog Mountain, Syringa Creek and Deer Creek wildfires are all roughly 1,500 hectares in size. Visit the BC Wildfire Service website for more information.