UPDATE: The Emergency Operations Centre has not been activated and local fire departments, along with BC Forest Service, are aware of the several wildfires burning in the region. Residents are asked to refrain from reporting the following wildfires, as they are currently being addressed.
Current local fires include:
Photo Credit: fire department handout.
Original Story:
The Little White Mountain wildfire burning north of Myra-Bellevue Provincial Park has nearly doubled in size.
Photo Credit: contributed by Grant Stovel.
Burning at an estimated 130 hectares in size, the wildfire is exhibiting aggressive behaviour; however, fire crews did manage to apply some retardant around the blaze.
Photo Credit: contributed by Marli Alina Mounsey.
The other wildfire currently burning in the Myra-Bellevue Provincial Park remains at six hectares in size. Air tankers managed to respond quickly to this fire and it is now 100 per cent contained within fire retardant.
Seeing as the two wildfires are burning in close proximity, BC Wildfire Service will be splitting up their resources. A crew of ten fire fighters and an air tanker are working to get the Myra-Bellevue Park fire under control, afterwards they will focus their attention on the White Mountain blaze.
Photo Credit: contributed by Scott Vigar.
Air tankers are currently taking water from the east side of Okanagan Lake in front of Lakeshore Road to help with fire suppression efforts. As such, BC Wildfire Service is advising people to stay away from the bridge all the way down to Okanagan Mountain Park.
“Over the course of this afternoon, we’ve had our skimmer aircraft working basically from earlier this afternoon until now, and they’ll be working intermittently throughout the rest of the afternoon and maybe even into the early evening, so we want to make sure that people stay out of the way,” added BC Wildfire Service Communications Officer Melissa Klassen.
Photo Credit: contributed by Jan Vozenilek.
Klassen also mentioned that an RCMP boat will be patrolling the region to make sure that people stay away from the airtankers.
“Earlier this afternoon, we were receiving reports of people trying to get closer to our aircrafts that are trying to skim water off of Okanagan Lake,” said Klassen.
In addition to these two fires, there were also two other wildfires sparked on Thursday afternoon.
Photo Credit: contributed by Diane Malette.
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