Fire officials are watching conditions on the Island closely as hot, dry weather continues, with a possibility of high winds and lightning later in the week.
A new wildfire started Monday afternoon south of Mount Washington and is considered out of control, said Gordon Robinson, information officer with the Coastal Fire Centre. The 12 other fires on the Island were being held, including a cluster of fires in Strathcona Park that were started by lightning.
Much of Vancouver Island was under a heat warning Monday, with temperatures of up to 34 C in the forecast. Temperatures are expected to remain high through Wednesday before dropping a few degrees on Thursday, according to Environment and Climate Change Canada.
Hot and dry conditions are drying out any moisture the Island has received in the past few weeks, turning grass, twigs and leaves into fuel for potential fires, Robinson said.
“Hot conditions elevate fire behaviour and then getting significant wind later this week, we’ll certainly have the potential to cause some very aggressive fire behaviour,” Robinson said.
Local fire departments in Nanaimo and Parksville have been busy with brush fires over the past two days.
Firefighters in Parksville fought two small brush fires about 100 metres apart Sunday evening on Ridgefield Drive.
When crews arrived, several residents were using garden hoses to control the smaller fire, which was about six metres by 12 metres, said Assistant Fire Chief Steven Liedl. That allowed firefighters to focus on the other fire, which was around 900 square metres.
The cause of the fires is not known and does not appear to be suspicious, Liedl said.
He said the fires are reminder to be diligent during the current hot and dry conditions, emphasizing the importance of trimming dry grasses and using rocks for ground cover instead of bark mulch.
In Nanaimo, firefighters responded to a blaze just after 10 a.m. Monday at the south end of Port Drive that started as a vehicle fire and spread to nearby brush, said deputy chief of operations Geoff Whiting.
“With the heat and the wind, it’s never good for fire situations, but they got it under control quickly,” Whiting said.
The vehicle, now heavily damaged, was in bushes and appeared abandoned. No injuries were reported, he said.
While the cause of the fire is under investigation, it appears the vehicle became stuck in the bushes and the fire may have started while people tried to remove it, Whiting said. People were witnessed leaving the scene, he said.
The fire danger for most of southern B.C., is ranked at moderate to high, while mapping shows the majority of the province remains at a drought level of four or five on the five-point scale, meaning serious economic effects from the dry conditions are likely or almost certain.
The B.C. Wildfire Service was reporting about 375 fires around the province on Monday, with about 11 recorded since midday Sunday and another 11 still ranked as fires of note, meaning they are highly visible or threaten people or property.
One of those, the Ross Moore Lake fire south of Kamloops, now covers more than 72 square kilometres, and on Sunday prompted a revised evacuation order for two properties east of Lac Le Jeune and an updated evacuation alert covering 343 properties.
Crews also had to work fast to douse flames that broke out Sunday on the hill just above Teck Resources’ Trail operations, potentially threatening the work site as well as some homes near the community of Warfield.
The wildfire service said one of its helicopters, aided by a full response from Kootenay Boundary firefighters and Teck’s trained crews, had handled the suspected human-caused blaze within hours.
— With a file from The Canadian Press
