Some Lac Du Bonnet residents allowed to return home after wildfire

More than 100 residents near Lac du Bonnet are allowed to return to their properties after a nearly weeklong wildfire evacuation order.

“This is good news, and we need more of it,” RM of Lac Du Bonnet reeve Loren Schinkel said Sunday.

Residents along Urban Road, which runs parallel to the Pinawa channel, were permitted to return as of 3:30 p.m. Sunday.

The road extends south from provincial road 313, where a blockade has been set up since Tuesday.

The area was not directly hit by wildfire.

Some residents along Wendigo Road were allowed back to their properties Wednesday, but Manitoba Hydro crews remain in the area fixing 68 poles that were burned by the fire.

The area remains secured between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m. until crews replace damaged infrastructure, but Schinkel said they are moving swiftly.

“They’re making remarkable progress, it’s almost like a symphony watching them work,” he said.

Hydro spokesperson Peter Chura said power is back for most in the area. By Tuesday, Hydro hopes to have power restored to about 100 residents still left without.

Security has also increased in the area due to evacuees not permitted to return home bypassing blockades and entering areas Hydro crews are working in.

Schinkel asked residents to be patient.

“It’s a real hazard, because these big machines sometimes can’t see people. They just about ran over a small vehicle that got in there somehow. It’s a real liability,” he said.

More than 800 people were evacuated beginning last Tuesday as the wildfire spread rapidly across the region. The province’s fire map shows the blaze has burned 4,000 hectares and it was still considered out of control as of Saturday.

While the area has opened up, fire crews are still working to put out hot spots in the southeast corner of the fire near Lee River Road, Schinkel said.

Schinkel remains uncertain when other parts of the evacuation zones will be safe to return to, owing to a lack of precipitation.

“We haven’t got nearly enough rain,” he said.

The area has only seen 11 millimetres of rain in the last four days, Environment Canada spokesperson Eric Dykes said.

Water bombers could still be seen containing the blaze west of provincial road 433 on Sunday and fire crews were digging up areas covered in peat moss which were still smouldering, according to Schinkel.

Fires in the Whiteshell and Nopiming Provincial Parks and the RM of Piney continue to burn.

The wildfire in Nopiming had grown to 101,000 hectares and is still considered out of control. More than 1,600 hectares of the Whiteshell was on fire as of Saturday and the fire continues to burn east of the Manitoba border in northwestern Ontario near Kenora.

Evacuation orders in the RM of Piney remain in place owing to a 8,900-hectare wildfire. A notice from the RM’s emergency co-ordinators says the fire is still only 50 per cent contained, but crews were able to put out 20 hot spots along the perimeter of the fire on Saturday.

Once the RM receives notice the fire is under control a notice will be sent out to the public, the notice states.

Winnipeg Free Press | Newsletter

Paul Samyn | Editor's Note

Wednesdays

A weekly dispatch from the head of the Free Press newsroom.

Sign up for Paul Samyn | Editor's Note

Sign Up

I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

The province’s fire map shows the fire was 8,900 hectares on Saturday. The area has received 18 millimeters of rain since Thursday.

In the Beresford/Long Lake area, more than 180 Hydro poles need to be replaced and 60 customers will remain without power until the repairs are made.

In the Bird/Booster Lake area, about 299 customers are without power due to lines being de-energized as a precaution while fires were threatening the area. Chura said Hydro may be able to re-energize those customers in the next day or two once line surveys and testing are complete.

Chura had no outage or damage information for the Piney and Whiteshell areas Sunday.

nicole.buffie@freepress.mb.ca

Nicole Buffie
Multimedia producer

Nicole Buffie is a reporter for the Free Press city desk. Born and bred in Winnipeg, Nicole graduated from Red River College’s Creative Communications program in 2020 and worked as a reporter throughout Manitoba before joining the Free Press newsroom as a multimedia producer in 2023. Read more about Nicole.

Every piece of reporting Nicole produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.