
The Embleton Mountain fire on July 10, 2021. (Photo: Tara Bouvette)
The BC Wildfire Service says crews battling the Embleton Mountain Fire near Sun Peaks are still in the mop-up stage.
Fire Information Officer, Forrest Tower, says while the fire is looking fairly stable right now, higher temperatures could lead to more visible activity within the fire perimeter.
“Really crews are going around the perimeter and just ensuring that there is no heat or hotspots that can create issues, if we do have some winds kind of spotting over existing guards,” he said. “So far there hasn’t been any major issues or concerns. We’ll keep crews on there and they’ll keep doing their thing.”
[CLIP] “It is kind of the phase of the fire where eventually the status will be changed, just depending on how quick crews can do that work. We’ve had drone scans of that fire done so crews can work of the GPS coordinates where a drone has identified some heat.”
Back on July 22, all evacuation orders for Whitecroft were lifted, while the evacuation alerts for Sun Peaks and Heffley Lake are no more as well. An evacuation alert remain in place for properties in Whitecroft as well as some properties north on Heffley-Louis Creek Road and south on Upper Louis Creek Road.
The Embleton Mountain Fire is still an estimated 920 hectares in size. Sun Peaks Resort has reopened now that Heffley-Louis Creek Road is open to traffic, though people are still being told to check Drive BC in case of any delays.
“There’s again, still a bit of work. Its under a 1,000 hectares but that’s a pretty big area if you actually look on the perimeter map and realize that people have to physically walk around all in those areas and get all their gear around,” Tower added.
“I don’t ever like to give super concrete timelines but [when crews are confident in the situation] at that point, we’d reassess and see what its like going forward [when it comes to classifying the fire as being-held.]”
The Embleton Mountain Fire broke out on July 9, and grew from a spot fire to a much more significant blaze the following day. A cause of the fire is still not known.