Fire in Green Timbers Urban Forest fire believed to be human caused

A fire in the Green Timbers Urban Forest is believed to have been human caused, fire officials in Surrey said Thursday.

The fire was spotted just after 6 a.m. on Thursday morning and was burning in a dense part of the forest, just off the Fraser Highway at 96 Avenue and 140 Street.

According to crews, they had a hard time locating exactly where it was due to the thick brush. Surrey Fire says the blaze at one point was 40 feet by 50 feet deep.

“There are no trails in there other than one very small trail that dead ends and then we can see that the denser smoke is probably coming about 700-800 feet deep into the bush,” said Deputy Fire Chief Dan Barnscher, with the Surrey Fire Service.

A few hours–and about 4000 gallons of water later–crews managed to get the fire under control, before turning the scene over to the city, who continue to monitor it.

As for how the fire started, Barnscher said initially it could have been a cooking fire in a homeless camp. However, by noon, Assistant Fire chief Brian Woznikoski said that was not the case and they can only conclude the fire was human caused.

“In the past, this park has had homeless people, but at this time there’s no evidence at all that a homeless person started this fire,” said Woznikoski.
Still residents who live in the area, say they’ve been smelling smoke since Monday.

“We waited 24 hours for the smoke cloud to disappear thinking it was a stray cloud of smoke from the interior fire, but it just got stronger so, by Tuesday night we made the report,” said Len, who lives near the urban forest.

He and his neighbours also say they’ve been reporting camps to city officials over the last several weeks and months. Since June 15, Surrey’s manager of By-laws and licensing says 11 camps have been dismantled in the urban forest.

“We’re always on the lookout for that, any fire, cooking or going on in the campsite. We encourage the public to call us if they see that and ourselves, we’re proactively enforcing in all the parks as well,” said Jas Rehal.