Yellowknife’s Deputy Fire Chief helped provide some fire safety tips for the summer season.
As the Yellowknife area continues to deal with dry weather and very little rain, the City of Yellowknife has implemented a fire ban on open air fires within the City’s municipal boundaries. The ban prohibits open fires, including the use of approved fire pits.
Deputy Fire Chief Gerta Groothuizen shared some more information about the bans, as well as some general fire safety tips.
“So first, there is a fire ban in effect, and no open fires will be permitted during this time. So that’s number one; we don’t want any sparks getting into the bush, and causing a forest fire. With campfires, I believe both Fred Henne and the Yellowknife River campground are banning fires in their areas as well.”
Groothuizen clarified that these measures are aiming to prevent any fires from occurring in the most dangerous areas, and encourages the people of Yellowknife to be incredibly careful with any kind of open flame while camping. She also suggests campers to make sure they have smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors in their campers to be as safe as possible.
While those are the main tips of advice for general camping and fire safety, Groothuizen gave some extra caution to any off-roaders.
“Taking motorized vehicles through the bush, so ATVs or motorbikes, especially when it’s this dry, any heat from the engines or exhaust that comes into contact with the dry grass will ignite the grass. It’s not ‘may’, it WILL ignite the grass. So people need to be extremely careful when using the motorized equipment.”
At the time of writing, there is very little rain predicted in Yellowknife’s forecast for the week of June 14th.
