The Wood Buffalo National Park has released another update regarding the ongoing wildfires in the area.
The fire near the Davidson-Pine Lake area saw some good news. Temperatures and winds were much lower and relative humidity was much higher than predicted resulting in much lower fire behaviour and limited fire growth in most fires in the Davidson-Pine Lake Complex.
The Davidson Lake fire 14 grew grew approximately 400 metres to the west today. The fire is still 7.5 km from the trigger point for community evacuation. Fire specialists observed low fire behaviour and winds were calm, with light southwest winds.
Crews checked on cabins and infrastructure at risk today and confirmed known values have yet to be impacted by fires in the area – the crews also added structure protection on two more cabins and maintained pre-existing sprinkler systems on other values in the area.
Weather forecasts have been uncertain about precipitation amounts. If significant rain arrives overnight (some forecasts up to 20mm) it will provide opportunities for heavy equipment to continue opening the old Peace Point road to provide more landscape level containment options closer to the fire, and potentially provide safe access points for direct suppression.
Currently, satellite monitoring is showing hot spots and perimeter growth within Wood Buffalo National Park that fire personnel have confirmed as inaccurate.
During periods of extreme fire behaviour, convective columns of super heated smoke and other activity can register on satellite monitoring as areas with heat. June 11th satellite data showed heat signals near the Grosbeak Lake and Rainbow Lake areas. Helicopters and fire crews immediately went to action these hotspots, but an assessment of the area found no fire in this area.
The burn out operations that were completed earlier this week on Fire 7 are holding and crews continued to reinforce dozer lines with hand ignition today. They recently patrolled dozer lines and action spot fires as required. They also searched for ignition opportunities to tie parts of Fire 7 into existing fuel guards. To date there have been no structures impacted directly by fire at Pine Lake. Structural protection equipment will continue to be deployed and maintained daily by crews.
Parks Canada is working closely with Alberta Wildfire and NWT Fire on containment strategies for Fire 7 to limit fire growth to the north.
