The Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency said the English Fire is almost 38,000 hectares in size as of Tuesday morning.
The SPSA also said only one water bomber is fighting the wildfire.
Steve Roberts, the acting vice-president of operations for the safety agency, told reporters it has continued to grow and is uncontained.
He said 25 SPSA staff, including a command team, as well as government firefighters, four First Nation fire crews and local fire departments and residents are engaged in stopping the blaze, which is now larger than Saskatoon.
He also said four fire retardant tanker aircraft, six helicopters and 11 bulldozers were being used.
A deputy fire chief of one of the local fire departments engaged in the efforts, Lyle White of the Smeaton and District Fire Department, said much more air support is needed.
“I don’t know what the problem is,” he said.
“This fire has been going for like 10 days. I’ve yet to see a water bomber.”
He added he had seen a fire retardant tanker on Tuesday, though it was the first time he had seen any planes.
On Tuesday, Roberts said the fire spread beyond the Fort a la Corne provincial forest.
“It moved into some farmland where crews were able to get at it. Anyone with homes in there have done other work to make sure they are prepared for encroachment.”
Nearby fields had been burned and singed and the smoke is visible from Hague, approximately 120 km away.
The English Fire, so named because it was first reported from a fire tower near the English Cabin, a tourist site northeast of Prince Albert, began on May 8.
Since then it caused the partial evacuation of James Smith Cree Nation.
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A few days later, the provincial government issued a advisories for residents in the RMs of Torch River and Garden River, requiring them to be ready to do the same.
Roberts said the province has five water bombers and the other four are undergoing winter maintenance.
He also said water is used as a cooling agent, that only two water bombers are usually employed and that using the retardant the tankers drop is the preferred method of fighting fires.
White told Global News he had been a firefighter for more than two decades and had never seen a fire this big.
He also said the government was quicker to send more planes to other fires.
The SPSA said the English Fire was caused by human activity and is being investigated.
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