After another weekend of this year’s unprecedented wildfire season, an additional six fires have been reported within Vancouver Island’s Strathcona National Park.
There previously were four wildfires in the park within close proximity to one another. Three of those have been designated as ‘under control’ since they ignited, but two merged to form a massive fire that has now grown to be over 1,400 hectares in size.
The large, out of control wildfire has been dubbed the Mount Con Reid wildfire due to the fact that it burns on a steep mountainside, making it strenuous and difficult for BC Wildfire Service to tend to it.
When a fire is designated as out of control, it means it is expected to spread.
The six newly discovered blazes in the park are also relatively close together; four are around 2.5 kilometres from one another near Elk River in the northern region of the park, with another of the fires around 10 kilometres further north — one is an outlier in the southern regions of Strathcona Provincial Park.
All six of these blazes are relatively small, ranging from 0.2 hectares to 2 hectares in size.
The BC Wildfire Service has labelled all of these fires, including the Mount Con Reid blaze, as being ‘monitor only.’ This means that because of their remote locations and the fact there is no critical infrastructure at risk, they are choosing to not direct their resources towards extinguishing these fires.
As of this Monday, August 28th, Vancouver Island has 17 active wildfires while the province as a whole has 376.
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The province remains in a state of emergency due and has since August 19th, mostly due to the wildfires that threaten West Kelowna, Kamloops, Shuswap and Salmon Arm. There are tens of thousands of people who have been evacuated from their homes throughout BC.
The Donnie Creek wildfire in northeast BC has now set the record for the largest blaze the BC Wildfire Service had had to contend with and is, at the time of this publication, over 583,000 hectares.
The smoke warning which was in place through the weekend in Greater Victoria and much of the rest of Vancouver Island has now been lifted, although a light haze is still visible on the horizon and those who suffer from respiratory conditions may still feel the impacts of the smoke.
According to the Environment Canada Air Quality Health Index (AQHI), Greater Victoria currently has a rating of three and by Tuesday evening, the forecast calls for a rating of two.
Victoria’s Monday night forecast calls for rain and a thunderstorm, which should help reduce the smoke looming over the region as well.
