A slow-burning wildfire in a scarred portion of the Shuswap is being monitored by the BC Wildfire Service.
The Mara Mountain wildfire is located seven km south of Sicamous. It isn’t threatening any structures, and no evacuation alerts or orders have been issued.
The BC Wildfire Service has estimated the fire’s size at 260 hectares. It’s listed as being out of control, albeit at a slow rate of spread.
A helicopter and an officer are monitoring the blaze.
“The fire is currently burning in an area that is surrounded by alpine on one side and burned scars from past wildfires,” said fire information officer Shae Stearns.
“When a wildfire is burning in areas like this, where there are scars from past wildfires, there’s typically less (forest fuels) for wildfires to burn. So if it moves through there, there’s less fuel for it to consume, so it lessens the fire’s activity.
“So it may act as a firebreak for future fires, and could aid by slowing or stopping them.”
Stearns added that this fire, though, has its challenges.
“One of which is slope stability, which we have seen in past wildfires in that area. And that is preventing heavy equipment from going into that area to work on the fire,” said Stearns.
There’s also a lack of safe access and egress, with one forest service road featuring two closures.
BC Wildfire says they’re working with local officials to create safe access.
“But we do continue to have helicopters bucketing and the potential for air tankers if there are identifiable objectives,” said Stearns.
“More often than not, aerial resources can’t put out a fire by themselves. So we hope to have ground crews in there to fully extinguish those fires.”