UPDATE FROM EARLIER WEB STORY (July 27, 2012). New info at bottom.
Department of Natural Resources has extinguished three woods fires recently.
On Friday, July 13, Bear River Fire Department arrived first on the scene of a half-acre fire in Morganville. The Bear River department put water on the fire for an hour and half before DNR took over.
DNR was on the scene all day Friday and Saturday chasing hot spots and extinguishing flare-ups on the perimeter. The fire was also travelling underground and springing up in unexpected places.
Rod Custance, a forestry technician with DNR, says they can’t be sure what started the fire but it may have been glass among the garbage on the site or it might have been lightning.
A camp near Uniacke Lake in Doucetteville burned to the ground in the early hours of Wednesday, July 18. When DNR arrived in the morning, the camp was a pile of ashes but a small 10-foot square hot spot was burning in a clearing nearby.
RCMP were notified of both fires.
On Sunday, July 22, Bear River Fire Dept. was again first on the scene of a small fire on the Purdy Road. The fire was only a couple hundred feet square but Custance says the dry very weather, high temperatures and light wind that day added up to the potential for a very bad fire.
Custance says DNR returned to that fire for a few hours Monday before calling the all clear. He says lightning or possibly stray fireworks may have started the fire.
As of Friday, July 30 Custance says the fire weather index had been lowered to low. The rain he said had been enough to soak the surface layer but underneath the ground is dry and will in all likelihood continue drying right through to September.
As of Friday, the open fire ban was still in force across the province. The ban prohibits setting open fires for any purpose in woods or within 305 m of woods in any part of the province.
Kejimkujik National Park however began allowing fires in designated fireplaces again on Tuesday, July 24.
For more information on the fire weather index check out:
http://www.gov.ns.ca/natr/forestprotection/wildfire/fwi/
jriley@digbycourier.ca
