Firefighters in northern Saskatchewan continue to get some cooperation from Mother Nature, and that means the provincial fire ban could be eased in the coming days, Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency (SPSA) officials said on Tuesday.
SPSA President Marlo Pritchard and SPSA Vice-President Steve Roberts both spoke to the media on Tuesday. Robert said the fire behaviour has improved in recent days and that’s helped the SPSA contain and limit their spread.
“We are starting to see some communities return,” Roberts said. “P3 individuals from Pelican Narrows have started to return, residents of Birch Park Lodge have returned to their small community in the Pelican Narrows area, and Weyakwin, as we know from the day before, has allowed their residents to return. Operations are underway right now to return folks home to Timber Bay.”
Roberts added that the Foran Mine Site has begun repatriation of their workforce so operations can begin again.
“The SPSA continues to work and inform local leadership of improving conditions and limitations to repatriation so that decisions can be made about terminating evacuations and bringing residents home to their community,” Roberts said.
Roberts thanked all of the partners from across North America who have come aboard.
“We continue to see that grow. Yesterday, firefighters from Washington state and this afternoon, firefighters from Colorado will arrive into Saskatchewan to help us fight these fires,” Roberts said.
“We’re augmenting those crews with Type 3 Saskatchewan firefighters. Already over 96 of those have been hired and deployed onto some of these fires.”
As of Tuesday afternoon, Roberts said, there are 23 active fires, of these five are contained, six are not contained, 10 are under ongoing assessment and two are under the protected values classification, with 257 reported since the start of the season, well above the five-year average of 146.
“Weather has been cooperating with us and the cooler temperatures and lower winds are allowing us to get more handle on some of these fires, putting crews into some of these areas that were too dangerous and high risk before, so we continue to make progress on each of the fires of note,” Roberts said.
“In addition, because of the moderate weather, we will be revising the fire ban this (Tuesday) afternoon. All areas north of the Churchill River that have received significant rain will be removed from the fire ban.”
Roberts said the they are monitoring the area south of the Churchhill and the Provincial Forest to make amendments when permitted.
The Shoe Fire continues to be the largest fire in Saskatchewan. Chartrand said it’s sitting at 503,000 hectares. Closures of Highway 912 and 913 are still in place.
The Jaysmith Fire northeast of Missinipe is at 139,000 hectares and Roberts said there are no road closures in place at this time.
The Ditch Fire north of Weyakwin is approximately 170,000 hectares, Ramsey Bay, Timber Bay and Molanosa have been evacuated. Highway 969 on the east side of Montreal Lake is closed but the Highways Department is working to have it reopened.
The Pisew Fire west of La Ronge is estimated at around 181,000 hectares. According to the SPSA, the fire is impacting Highways 2 North in the vicinity of La Ronge to limit non-essential traffic.
The Pelican Fire near Pelican Narrows is listed as around 34,000 hectares. Pelican Narrows has been evacuated with high priority people evacuated. Highway 135 is open to both Pelican Narrows and Sandy Bay.
The Club Fire near Creighton and La Ronge is 80,000 hectares combining both Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
The Wolf Fire that started west of Denare Beach is estimated at 130,00 hectares, and forced the evacuation of Jan Lake, Denare Beach and the McIlveena Mine Site and Highways 106 and 167.
The impacts of the Wolf and Club fires are Highway 167 to Denare Beach and Highway 106 from the 135 junction to Creighton.
“After today, those two fires will be considered one fire of note because they are immediately adjacent and are being managed centrally at the same time, so after today the Wolf and the Club will just be referred to as a single fire of note,” Roberts said.
Roberts added that there are still 33 communities in the province that are evacuated or partially evacuated.
“The Public Safety Agency is supporting 860 individuals, the Canadian Red Cross is supporting 9,160 individuals,” he explained.
Pritchard said that once the SPSA becomes aware of people in need they work to look after their needs while repatriation efforts with local leadership begins.
“I do want to acknowledge that there is a backlog in some of our evacuation support. We have currently scaled up with 14 additional staff to help address that backlog and currently we are triaging those,” Pritchard said.
He explained that triaging means looking after the most urgent needs first. Pritchard explained that they are aware of people who have self-evacuated and are in need of support but will look after the ones in critical need first.
“We’re dealing with those ones that are of immediate need to either support with the food vouchers, some financial support, or a hotel. Those are the ones that we’re working on and we’re going to get through that backlog as quickly as humanly possible,” Pritchard said.
Prictahed said that at the seven sites operated by the SPSA they have staff on from 8 a.m. until midnight to support evacuees with activities, food, shelter and emergency clothing.
“We have partnered with NGO’s to help with the psychosocial supports as well as we partnered with SHA to ensure that they have medical access when and if needed,” Pritchard said.
He thanked everyone who has been helping evacuees across locations.
“It really is great to see the willingness to step forward and help individuals as they’re going to be extremely special, traumatic time during these evacuations.”
Roberts said there are still 400 value including cabins, residences, lodges and vehicles that have been destroyed or damaged with 295 confirmed.
“That number will continue to grow as we put evaluation crews into some of these spots to capture whether the fire did any damage structures or the sprinkler systems and other measures we put in place were successful. There will be some upgrades to that number, especially in the Denare Beach area,” Roberts said.
Pritchard said that they want to confirm how bad the damage is in Denare Beach, which was described as having burned through to Manitoba in an update last week.
“Although I know there are a lot of the evacuees that have not been notified yet, we want to make sure 100 per cent sure that those individuals or those properties are either damaged or destroyed or not damaged. We know they’re waiting for that information. But I can assure everyone that that process is ongoing as we speak,” Pritchard said.
michael.oleksyn@paherald.sk.ca
