Favourable weather and cooler temperatures Sunday are providing a much-needed reprieve for firefighters as they battle a wildfire north of Canmore.
The fire is located in the Municipal District of Bighorn and as of Sunday at 10 p.m., was considered held and was about 676 hectares in size. This status means the fire is not likely to spread beyond its boundaries.
Earlier in the day Sunday, the fire was considered to be out-of-control.
“We are seeing much more favourable weather today — those cooler temperatures, (with) those higher relative humidity,” Travis Fairweather, wildfire information officer with the government of Alberta, said.
“But most importantly, just lower wind speeds and less intense winds. And the forecast going forward looks pretty favorable as well. There is a chance of rain this evening, which could certainly be a great help to us.”
Fairweather said there were 14 wildland firefighters deployed Sunday fighting the wildfire. On Saturday, there were 26. Wildfire crews spent the weekend working the flames from the ground as well as in the air – with helicopters bucketing overhead.
He said they can call in more resources from around the province, if needed.
“Usually, an air tanker group is about four air tankers. So there’s two air tanker groups that are quite close. So that would be either tanker that could come in on pretty much on a moment’s notice,” Fairweather said.
Fortunately, the fire is moving in a favourable direction – moving north and blowing away from Banff National Park – toward an area with fewer trees and “not much place for the wildfire to go.”
“The wildfire operations were able to conduct a controlled burn. So what that is, is when conditions are safe, particularly with wind speed and direction, they’re able to light fire in the path of the fire and sort of burn up those trees so that if the wildfire does move in that direction, it hits these trees that have already burned and doesn’t have anywhere to go,” Fairweather said.
A lot of the increased in size overnight was attributed to the control burn, he said.
The rain in the forecast isn’t enough to put out the fire, but Fairweather said it may be enough to lower the intensity.
“These 500-hectare fires — the rain probably won’t put it out but it’ll certainly lower the wildfire intensity enough where we can get more crews on the ground. (We’ll) start working those long hard days of digging up those hot spots looking for areas of smoke and getting that fire under control.”
According to Alberta Wildfire, there were 178 new wildfires in August.
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