There is a wildfire at Minnekhada Regional Park

In response to a wildfire that started at about 2 p.m. PT on Saturday in a regional park in British Columbia’s Minnekhada and has negatively impacted the area’s air quality, the regional district of Metro Vancouver, B.C. Coquitlam Fire Rescue and the Wildfire Service are responding.

Since the fire started in the park’s High Knoll region, which is a few kilometres to the east of Coquitlam, Minnekhada Regional Park has been closed.

According to Brant Arnold-Smith, the director of Metro Vancouver’s emergency operations centre, “the site of the fire is on extremely steep and rugged terrain, needing both ground and air help.”

Fire efforts were scaled back overnight for the safety of the personnel and completely restarted on Sunday at sunrise, the official added.

For this time of year, the weather is exceptionally hot and dry, which crews must deal with. The fire was thought to be blazing across 11 hectares, or 0.11 square kilometres, as of Sunday morning.

Although there was no lightning in the region on Saturday, according to Arnold-Smith, it’s probable that the fire was set by humans Investigations into the fire’s origin are ongoing.

According to the B.C. Wildfire Service, 23 firefighters and three helicopters were sent to assist. On Sunday, bucketing operations encompassed five planes, including two leased helicopters from Metro Vancouver. Additionally difficult for the crews was the lack of any local water sources.

According to Arnold-Smith, smoke from the fire will probably continue to linger over Metro Vancouver’s eastern regions through Tuesday. A federation of 21 municipalities makes up Metro Vancouver.

He said that “suppression efforts [Sunday] are raising the level of smoke in the area.” As the fire is put out, the air quality should improve over the course of the following 24 to 48 hours.

The wildfire season continues

According to Neal McLoughlin, superintendent of the B.C. Wildfire Service’s predictive services, the province might see ignitions due to the persistently hot and dry weather.

He stated that this year’s “extremely peculiar fire season” is still going strong.

According to McLoughlin, the season was uncommon because it began gradually with wetness and a delayed snowmelt, changed to hot, dry temperatures by July, and remained that way until October.

There has been little to no rain in various areas of British Columbia in recent weeks, and temperatures are around five to eight degrees higher than average for this time of year.

He claims that for the agency to declare fire season ended, between 10 and 20 millimetres of rain would likely be required over British Columbia over the course of one or two days.

Although there are fewer lightning strikes and human-caused fires aren’t starting as frequently, he said that all it takes is one spark to generate a huge fire or an aggressive day for fire behaviour.

Crews are able to contain flames thanks to rain and cooler temperatures at Battleship Mountain.
While the latest “wildfire of significance” was downgraded by the wildfire service on September 24, 174 wildfires were still burning on Sunday across the province.

This comes as the Forests Ministry issues a drought alert for portions of British Columbia.

On a scale of 1 to 5, the second-most severe level of drought has been attained in the province’s northeast, inner south coast, and Vancouver Island.