Wildfire season continues to eat away at province, Meachen fire threatening Kimberley

KAMLOOPS (NEWS 1130) – The B.C. Wildfire Service says the fire situation across the province is quite active still, and one of the main concerns is the Shovel Lake Wildfire just west of Prince George.

“That remains the largest wildfires of note in B.C. at this moment. It’s currently 85,700 hectares in size,” explains fire information officer Kyla Fraser. That works out to about seven-and-a-half times as big as Vancouver.

“Our priority is always the fire that is the most threatening or affecting communities. Our first priority is always to protect public safety and the safety of our crews. I know there’s been some structural protection for that fire there. I believe they’re actually working overnight,” she says.

“Certainly higher priority there.”

She says extra resources have been brought in to help contain that fire with a total of 253 firefighters at that fire with helicopters and heavy equipment lending a hand. Fraser says earlier this week strong winds grew the fire a bit, but those have since died down.


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Unfortunately, with no rain in the foreseeable forecast, they’re far from out of the woods.

Fraser says the cause of the fire is still under investigation.

Kimberley under alert

Meantime, the city of Kimberley remains under an evacuation alert, meaning people have to be ready to leave their homes at the drop of a hat. Fraser says the Meachen Creek blaze is about 7,000 hectares in size.

“It’s important to note that the fire has experienced minimal growth over the last day. The change in the size is more of a result of more accurate mapping,” she explains. “Little change on that one overnight.”

Kimberley Mayor Don McCormick says despite the circumstances, people living in the affected area are surprisingly optimistic.

“Everybody really embraced it and the community as a whole is pretty calm about this whole thing. We’ve got an awful lot of smoke, but so does every where else in B.C. and it’s important to keep our cool and wait for instructions.”

He says RCMP have gone door to door and delivered 4,500 evacuation alert notices warning people to prepare to leave on short notice. “It’s basically wait and see, kind of life as usual until there’s some kind of escalation or until the alert is removed.”


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McCormick says it’s early to see how this situation will play out as mother nature has a pretty powerful say in how crews battle the fires.

“We’re very optimistic that our wildfire service folks are doing an awesome job. They’ve got a plan and we’re trying to stay out of their way while they execute that plan.”

He adds he’s extremely proud of how Kimberley is conducting itself in light of scary events. “We need to listen, we need to respond and stay calm. I’m extremely proud of our community right now because that’s exactly the way they’re behaving.”

Preventing human-caused fired

“We have had some human caused wildfires this year which is very unfortunate. They’re always preventable and deter resources away from the lightening caused fires that we can’t prevent,” says Fraser.

And even though there were only three new fires sparked since yesterday, Fraser says it’s a good a chance as any to remind people campfire bans blanket the entirety of B.C.

“If you’re camping this weekend or next weekend, please keep that in mind and make sure you’re abiding by those bans. They’re in place to protect public safety and to make sure the fire situation doesn’t get any worse.”

-With files from Taran Parmar

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