(Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency/Facebook)

By Nick Nielsen

SPSA and PAFD Respond

Wildfire season is here according to PA Fire Department and SPSA

Apr 30, 2025 | 12:08 PM

With the snow finally melting and spring officially arriving, wildfire season is underway in the province. The past week has seen large wildfires outside of town and smaller fires within city limits, and it’s made for a busy start to the season for firefighters.

Right now the conditions outside of the city are pretty common for this time of year according to Steve Roberts, the Vice President of the Saskatchewan Public Safety Association (SPSA).

“The fire season starts in the south and heads up to the north and right where we are along the fringe of the forest, we’re seeing that the fine fuels, the grasses, shrubs and stuff, they’re dry and they haven’t greened yet. So it’ll take sort of the first decent rain or so before the grass turns green and the trees bud out, and when they do, they actually bring water in. So they’re actually more fire resistant. This is the driest point of their cycle.”

As of now, the province has already seen 53 wildfires so far according to Roberts, which is above the five year average of 30, but the good news is that number is down from 80 active wildfires at this point last year. Roberts also said that all of the wildfires we have seen so far in the province have been human-caused, not weather related.

“It comes through both agriculture activity, like farmers who are clearing up some debris, even folks who have acreages in sort of this fringe forest area clearing up around their yards and stuff, burning leaves, maybe some branches that came down over the winter, just recognizing that this time of year that it’s probably more risky than they imagine. Should a fire start, it can actually travel fairly quickly, so people who start those fires, they don’t recognize that risk and are often unprepared.”

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Farmers clearing out brush in the Prince Albert area have a bit of a unique challenge to deal with compared to the rest of the province. With a lot of the land around Prince Albert being next to forest and large patches of trees, it becomes more important for farmers to have their ways to keep a fire away from those trees where they can spread faster and farther.

Any farmer within 4.5 miles of the fringe of the forest is required to have a burn permit issued from the SPSA if they plan to burn any brush piles. Farmers in the rest of the performance only need to call in to the Controlled Burn Unit to inform local firefighters and first responders of when and where their burn is set to take place.

Members of the public also need to be aware as they start to hit some of the trails or even getting an early season camping trip in.

“It might be a little drier than people think, so be prepared. If you’re allowed to have a campfire and you have one, make sure you have some water handy. If you’re going to be done with your fire, just leaving it banked up is probably not adequate. Make sure you extinguish it and stir the coals and that it’s cool to the touch. It may look like it’ll stay in the fire ring, but it it may be the spark coming from it that goes outside the fire ring. So be extra diligent,” Roberts said.

As for within Prince Albert city limits, Deputy Fire Chief Alex Paul said the conditions in the city are very dry right now, and that’s contributed to the fires we’ve seen early in the season.

“I would say that the fire risk is definitely high, but we’re in a little better position within the city limits because we don’t have vast areas of wild land within the city limits where there’s long grass and open grass. We have park areas that are typically trimmed grass, so that doesn’t pose as much of a risk in the springtime. It’s some of our areas in the city where there’s some some natural vegetation, trees and long grass that can’t be mowed due to the terrain, so that long grass when it dies off in the fall, it stays. That poses an extremely high risk.”

While there are fire bans in the rural municipalities around Prince Albert, the city itself does not have a fire ban active at this time. That said, any fire lit in someone’s back yard or in a public place such as the woodfire barbecues at Little Red Park need to follow certain bylaws to keep the public safe and the greenery in Prince Albert from being lit up.

For shared barbecue spots like the ones in Little Red, there are some common courtesies people should follow so they don’t set up the person behind them for failure.

“We would certainly ask that anytime they leave one of those public barbecue spaces that they ensure that their fire is fully extinguished. So putting water on that fire to to make sure that it’s fully out, if they leave and the wind picks up, then it’s easy for embers to spread into the bush, particularly out at the Little Red Park.”

The city has also conducted some controlled burns this year to stop anything from getting out of hand later on, and there may be more to come this year.

“There are locations within the city that we do controlled burns and those are some of those higher risk areas that aren’t mowed throughout the summer season. So we do some burning in the grassy area to the north of the Victoria Hospital, we’ll burn along the railroad tracks, we’ll burn along some of the drainage ditches, so if you see our equipment and manpower out there working, then you don’t need to call it in.”

If you do have a fire that even has you wonder if it’s starting to get out of control, do not hesitate to call the fire department and let the professionals handle the job.

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nick.nielsen@pattisonmedia.com