Tatoosh fire threatens Manning Park; continues to grow after crossing border

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This article was published 05/09/2006 (6957 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

VANCOUVER (CP) – An evacuation alert has been issued to residents around B.C.’s Manning Park as the 21-square-kilometre Tatoosh fire encroaches on the park’s fringes.

The alert covers residents of Eastgate, Pasayten River Valley and Manning Park, said Mary Ann Leach of the Kamloops Fire Centre. “It’s just an alert, not an order, to get people ready . . . in case they do have to leave on short notice,” she said. It was not immediately known how many people were affected by the order in the area southeast of Vancouver.

Fire information officer Jeff Moore said on Tuesday the fire was “zero per cent contained.”

“We fully expect that size has increased today,” said fire information officer Moore, adding smoke conditions still make estimating the size of the fire difficult.

The current estimate of the fire that began Aug. 22 in Washington state and crossed the border came after overnight infrared photography provided by the U.S military.

Meanwhile, the Tripod Complex fire in north-central Washington state, burning since July 24, has also been sending a steady stream of smoke and ash into Canada.

It was 1.5 kilometres from the international border by Tuesday evening.

“It is inching its way closer so we are monitoring and planning for it hitting the border,” said fire information officer Colette Fauchon.

Dense smoke was still hampering efforts to battle the growing Tatoosh fire.

Moore said some wind out of the north allowed greater visibility for fixed wing aircraft and helicopters with buckets to attack the blaze. But the drought-like conditions were complicating the battle.

“There are no adequate water supplies that can be fed directly to a retardant base location,” Moore said. “The other limitation is the large aircraft – even though they’re helicopters – need relatively large areas in which to operate.

“It’s not business as usual for us,” he said. “The drought this summer has certainly affected water supply,” though catch basins collecting snow melt and valley-bottom rivers can be used as water sources.

Firefighters are trying to build guards around the fire and burn off fuel in front of the advancing blaze to allow air tankers and helicopters to support those efforts.

The fire was not threatening residences but was on the southeastern border of Manning Park as of Tuesday morning, said Moore.

He said an infrared flight overnight Monday detected a “spot fire” north of the Tatoosh fire that was 250 hectares in size.

“This is just proof of what we’ve been indicating all along, that the smoke in that valley is hampering our visibility and ability to detect new fires,” he said.

The biggest issue is the safety of the personnel fighting the fire.

“Had we had people on the ground in front of that fire they may well have been stuck between two large fires.”

Most of the ground and air firefighters were assembled in Princeton waiting for an opportunity to battle the blaze.

A number of back roads in the Pasayten wilderness area, which skirts the border, have been closed but no major highway routes have been affected.

An emergency centre has been established in Princeton but no formal evacuation alerts have been issued.