The White Rock Lake wildfire near Westwold is now an estimated 20,000 hectares, according to the BC Wildfire Service.

Fire Information Officer, Mike McCulley, says it has been a challenging few days for the crews that are battling this fire.

“People have noticed that its very smoky, that’s due to an increase in fire activity, and we did see this coming. We knew the winds were going to pick up a little bit, temperatures would increase and that’s what we saw,” he said, on the NL Morning News.

“So it did cause some growth towards the Monte Lake area, towards the Monte Creek FSR. Clearly, we’re going to continue to see more growth.”

McCulley adds the smoky skies are also making it a challenge for crews to use aircrafts and helicopters to fight the White Rock Lake fire, which has been burning since July 13.

“When it gets smoky like this, we do get some advantage in that it keeps the surface temperature cooler, it keeps the fire behaviour down a little bit at least earlier in the day, but the challenge we have is that its very hard to see what’s going on out there and very hard to suppress it with aircrafts,” he said.

Properties southeast of Kamloops as well as those in Monte Creek and Falkland were put on evacuation alert yesterday while some properties near Monte Lake and around Pinaus Lake were on evacuation order.

“Weather is dynamic and weather drives fire. As the winds change so does the direction of the fire. For now, that’s the growth we’ve been seeing, at least on that flank of the fire, and its a very large fire,” he added.

“I can’t stress enough to folks how challenging conditions are out there. There’s lots of fuel, its dry, and its going to stay that way for a while.”

McCulley notes crews will be assessing the situation every hour to see if more properties need to be put on evacuation alert or order.

“Please respect our closure areas. When we’re working in these fires, we do need people to stay out of the way,” he said. “If we can fly, if we do get a window of visibility, its important to capitalize on that. And if we have people in our fire line area, it can often impede our operations.”

The BC Wildfire Service is expecting the potential for thunderstorms in the area of this fire on Thursday, which could be accompanied by strong winds and dry lightning, which could lead to the fire growing to the east and northeast.

“We have [structure protection crews] go in there and sort of try and prioritize through triage where the best efforts can be made to protect what’s out there. We have specialists in play that go look at the properties and determine the best sprinkler setup, if its possible,” McCulley said. “And then we are also using what we call a mobile structure protection task force. So that is a series of engines, similar to what you would see in a city fire department.”

“They are the same types of trucks, often they come from other fire departments, so they’re professional firefighters and they’re looking to extinguish hotspots and protect any of the structures that they can.”