The BC Wildfire Service merged the Mount Eneas and Munro wildfires near Peachland on Sunday.
Incident Commander Glen Burgess said the decision to conduct a controlled burn and connect the fires was made for safety reasons, with temperatures forecast to soar in the coming days.
“We haven’t moved into the extreme hot weather or much hotter weather that is predicted and lower humidity,” Burgess said.
“We wanted to try and get it done before that happened. But while it’s going to get warmer and dryer over the next few days, we don’t anticipate any winds, it’s going to be stable.”
Firefighters first carried out a test burn to determine the situation was safe.
Burgess said the burn, about four kilometres south of Peachland, would create an increased plume of visible smoke.
Merging the fires decreases the fire perimeter and helps keep the wildfire off of steep slopes, bringing it to workable, safe terrain for ground crew, Burgess said.
He added that it would increase the total fire size by about 10 per cent, but would come with a corresponding decrease in risk as the controlled burn used up excess fuel.
In preparation for the fire merger, air tankers created a fire retardant line on the northwest corner of the fire.
Burn operations were carried out with both helicopter and by hand ignition.
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