The 510 Realm

I just spent the last 3 days up in Manning Park, at an elevation of 4,200 feet where I go. In all my years in the bush, this is possibly the driest I have ever experienced it to be. As the first day was the last day for camp fires before the ban, I gave my family a demonstration of how easy a fire can start. I grabbed a handful of pine needles off the forest floor and a small bit of the desiccated moss and put that in the fire pit. With ONE match, it literally exploded into flame in 5 seconds.

I always take a mini weather station with me and the temperature was 37.6C with humidity at 6%...wow is that dry! Even with our incredibly wet spring and the small plant life is green, the forest is dead dry. Even in the dead of our short nights, the humidity recovery was very low, so all the fine fuel content on the forest floor just stays as tinder.

I came back to a State of Emergency in the Province, with 138 new fires as of this morning, some of them getting very big and none under control. I see now the main Highways are closed in some of the corridors.

IF...you are a smoker..PLEASE be careful and do not throw anything out the window, no matter where you are!!!

The fire at Harrison Lake is human caused, either from a campfire poorly extinguished, or, a cigarette, or BOTH, knowing the type of idiots that go up there.

The summer is done now for campfires but if you are out there recreating, just be very careful! It takes 30 - 100 years for a forest to re-build and the destruction to property takes a toll on people that you cannot put a value on.

The smoke from the fires yesterday,was from Salmon Arm to about 30 km from the south end of the coke hwy
at points the smoke was so thick,could barely see a few hundred feet in front of us
Merritt was so busy,I heard some evacuated there

I feel for all involved,the whole situation is not good.

I see that Merlin and his park ranger service has closed Well Gray National Park, and the ranger have all become security gaurds to keep everyone out. Admittedly, they simply don't trust that folks can be careful, so no one is going in.

I was at the local Autoparts store on Friday, a counter person was out with a shovel in the garden out front. Presumably a tossed cigarette was thrown into the planter an the fine bark mulch quickly started burning. Turns out the one counter guy spent a few summers fighting Forrest fires and knew what to do quickly without water and had it extinguished before any damage was done.

Be carful with our forests.

Byron

Dang! Sorry to hear about those fires. Cali is burning also as it does every year, and like bertvorgon says "do not throw anything out the window, no matter where you are!!! So true. Here in NH were surrounded by bush, brush and trees and I see smokers constantly tossing out hot cigarettes and I'm always amazed that we don't have fires out here I mean we do but their tiny as in 20-30 acres. But yeah, do not toss anything out the window, especially glass bottles because broken glass with sun light acts like a magnifying glass.

1500 hectare fire south of town here has some people scared and many on evac alert. Lots of evacuees coming up from Williams Lake and surrounding areas are inhabiting parks in town in Quesnel.

Where are you Jordan...Quesnel? I have a lot of mining customers up in that area, just curious as to what you are seeing.

Yes, Quesnel the gold city. Smoke and choppers when the smoke clears!

Today it's been clearer. We're all watching the dragon mountain fire but it's small potatoes in the grand scheme of things.

Thanks Jordan,

I have guys scattered all the way out to Barkerville, then down to Likely and the Mnt. Polley area, they must be a bit worried. There are some fires burning in the Yukon but so far other than smoke, no camp is at risk yet.

Just heard that Williams Lake has been ordered to evacuate. Prayers to all.for a safe drive.stay safe.

All my miners have been shut down now as the fire level has been at Cat 5 for more than 3 consecutive days.

Smoke has been horrible for some of them and serious health issues are cropping up.

Yeah. I can corroborate that the air up here is terrible. There's a weird orange hue in the air. I've seen blue sky once in the last week. Hospital is at 2x capacity with Williams Lake folks. We are a little isolated from the mass exodus (~ 11k folks) because the highway is closed between us and Williams Lake.

Are you working there Jordan?

There are about 57 fires in the Yukon right now, of none have affected my customers, other than some smoke getting close. What a summer so far.

We have friends just a hair north of that bloody fire in Lake Country, a kilometer away, look at the houses burned there, all due to some chimps who had an illegal fire on the beach. They were really scared as the wind off the Lake blew that fire up the hill so fast, one wind shift and it would have been game over for their house. Just crazy!

Both my brother's cabin at Loon and M&D's ranch in the Beaver Valley near 150 mile are evacuated and at risk, not good. We were in the Maritimes for 10 days and it was all anyone talked about when they heard we were from BC. Not much specifics on the news either makes it tough to sit and wonder...

Here's a link to an interactive map, and current situation of each fire.

http://governmentofbc.maps.arcgis.com/a ... kPoint=300

Byron

Funny, the "inter-active" map does not show the Loon Lake fire.

I was thinking of Noel's place the other day, sure hope it survives! Along with everybody else's. Jeez, I never thought of M & D, keep us posted.

On the way home yesterday Vancouver and the North shore were filling up with smoke, looked horrible.

One of my customers dropped by the house last night, he said the Kaleden fire came within 500 meters of his place along the lake.