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By Mat Barrett

WildFire

English Creek fire remains uncontained, but progress is being made according to SPSA

May 21, 2020 | 1:31 PM

There’s finally some positive news when it comes to the English Fire that started burning in the Fort à la Corne forest on May 8.

After days of significant growth, the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency (SPSA) said they have made very good progress on the blaze that is now 41,900 hectares in size. However, the fire still remains uncontained, but there was some help from Mother Nature on Wednesday according to Acting Vice President of Operations Steve Roberts.

“High humidity, cooler temperatures, and precipitation yesterday and through the evening have kept fire behaviour low,” he said. “Today, we’re seeing very low smoke and fire activity.”

Roberts said there were some gusty winds on Wednesday as well, creating some activity on the west side, and southwest corner of the fire, but crews were able to limit its effect with some of that help from the weather. Less smoke and fire activity has also made things easier for the numerous fire crews that are on the ground when it comes to building fire guards.

There is currently no official number on how much the fire is actually contained.

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There’s also been a few structural losses to report.

“We’re only aware of some fence line and some bee hives,” Roberts said. “I think are the only structures, only items that have been damaged by the fire besides the timber values in the area.”

The SPSA also said they are working to map out how much farmland has been lost due to the fire. Roberts said they don’t expect it to be much, but there is some hurdles to jump over to get an accurate number.

“At the same time this fire was occurring, there was actually a large number of agriculture burning,” he said. “Some of the fires that were causing concerns with local residents were actually not related to this fire. So we’re mapping that to determine which impacts, if any, were related to the fire, and which impacts were related to other burning activities that were going on in the area.”

Roberts said there is no more agriculture burning happening in the area.

While the English Fire is big and is wreaking havoc on local residents, and the provincial forest, Roberts said they are actually having a quieter fire season. The English Fire is currently the only active wildfire in Saskatchewan.

“We’re a couple weeks behind. The fire counts compared to our five-year average is significantly less, about a third of the five-year average,” Roberts told northeastNOW. “We are anticipating that we will have an average to a slightly above average fire season according to the weather modelers, but so far we haven’t seen that in actual fires occurring.”

The investigation into the cause of the man-made fire remains ongoing, according to Roberts.

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mat.barrett@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @matbarrett6