More than 120 properties near wildfires in the Kamloops area were taken off of evacuation order Thursday night.
The Thompson-Nicola Regional District lifted several orders near the Sparks Lake fire, which means 81 properties are now on evacuation alert instead. This affects Red Lake to the southeast of the fire’s boundaries, and areas around Sabiston Creek Road and Copper Creek Road to the fire’s southwest.
This comes after 110 properties were taken off evacuation order on Wednesday night, for areas on and around part of Tranquille-Criss Creek Road and Frederick Road primarily.
This means in the past two days, about two-thirds of evacuation orders near the Sparks Lake fire have been lifted. There are still eight evacuation orders in place for the TNRD at the Sparks Lake blaze, and a map of affected areas can be found here. Another evacuation order remains in place on the Skeetchestn Indian Band.
Despite the number of evacuations being lifted, the fire is far from being contained. BC Wildfire Service crews have been focusing largely on containing the southern flanks of the fire, where there are more properties and structural values at risk. Officials say there has been “extreme” growth in recent days to the north and northeast, and the blaze is mapped at 65,484 hectares as of this morning.
Meanwhile, east of Ashcroft, 41 properties have been taken off of evacuation order near the Tremont Creek wildfire, in the area of Barnes Lake. There remain only two evacuation orders in place within the TNRD because of that fire, which are on Woods Creek Forest Service Road. The fire broke out on July 12, and for most of the month since then, about 110 properties were evacuated.
In its most recent update on Thursday morning, the BC Wildfire Service said the Tremont Creek fire had little-to-no fire activity at its northern flanks, in places near Barnes Lake and Walhachin where it has burned. However, fire activity has still been extreme, it says, on the southeast flank of the blaze. The blaze is still mapped at 19,772 hectares.
As of Friday morning, there are 3,058 properties on evacuation order province-wide and 18,691 properties on evacuation alert. There are 242 active wildfires.
Since April 1, there have been 1,259 fires in B.C. that have burned 471,083 hectares. Most of the fire activity has happened in the past 31 days, since June 29; in that time, 468,000 hectares have burned.
