Small forest fire ignites northeast of Squamish

SQUAMISH (NEWS1130) – A small forest fire ignited about 15 kilometres northeast of Squamish earlier today.

Shane was the first to call News1130 around 4 p.m. to say it looked like it was coming from Brohm Ridge.

“The plume of smoke, honestly I thought it was a volcano going off. Now it’s turning black and it’s a little orange,” Shane describes. “The cloud of smoke that’s accumulating is about twice the size of Mount Garibaldi, the whole rocky peak.”

Rick was driving on the Sea to Sky Highway and described the smoke as a mushroom cloud. “[It looked] almost like a nuclear explosion.”

From the News1130 AirPatrol, Kim Seale was able to see the smoke from North Vancouver.

“We were told that this did not look like something that was a planned burn of any sorts. It looks like it’s definitely out of control and went up very quickly,” Seale explains. “The two pilots that talked to my pilot were very worried for that area.”

“There’s smoke that I’m seeing over the mountain range is sort of a grayish-brown. It reminds me a lot of that big fire we had up through Elephant Path a number of years ago that we got sent to,” she adds.

Donna MacPherson with the Coastal Fire Centre says the flames are covering at least four hectares.

“[It’s a] pretty steep and inaccessible area. It posses no threat to anybody. It’s burning sort up uphill and in a long strip,” MacPherson explains.

“The air-tankers have completed their work. We have a repel crew of three on the ground that are working,” she notes. “The air-tankers were able to get a retardant-guard around the head of the fire, so it’s still smoking but we do have a guard at the top.”

MacPherson adds the fire is in between high and extreme fire danger.

“We expect the fire to be fairly active during the daytime. As the night cools and picks up a little bit of moisture, the fire will likely become slightly less effective overnight, but again, once it dries out and heats up tomorrow it will probably regain some of its intensity.”