Forest firefighters are busy today trying to contain two large blazes.
Crews are focused on a 1,500 hectare fire west of Prince Albert, which has yet to be contained.
Steve Roberts is the executive director of the Wildfire Management Branch. He says smoke is starting to accumulate near Holbein, suggesting at this time, the smoke is not posing a risk to air quality.
“We’re getting smoke from that fire, but it’s also — we’re getting smoke in the area that’s coming from a prescribed fire out of the Prince Albert National Park. We have smoke combining in areas like the river-bottom valleys, is where we’re getting some accumulations,” Roberts said.
“We don’t have a lot of smoke, it just happened to accumulate. We think we’ll be fine for air quality over the next little while.”
Roberts says in trying to contain the Holbein fire, the weather conditions are favourable.
“Hot weather today, provided the winds stay calm, we should be making much more progress on that Holbein fire,” Roberts explained.
The fire season has been much busier than in past years. To date, there are 142 reported fires. The five-year average is 82.
Many of these fires are human-caused and Roberts is advising residents to exercise extreme burning caution due to the really hot and dry conditions.
The other fire crews are battling today is an 850 hectare blaze in the Meadow Lake Provincial Park, which also has yet to be contained.
(PHOTO: Forest fire south of Holbein. Photo courtesy of Randy Hoback, Twitter.)