UPDATE – A suspected human-caused wildfire northwest of Merritt city limits was turned into a controlled burn on Tuesday.

The BC Wildfire Service says the Rocky Pines fire is under control, at an estimated 15 to 20 hectares in size.

Fire Information Officer, Shaelee Stearns, tells NL News the wildfire service was called in to assist the Lower Nicola Indian Band fire department.

“We ended up using existing boundaries to burn what needed to burn, so that is why we saw the growth in that fire,” Stearns said. “It wasn’t due to wind or anything. It was actually us utilizing it to do the burning that had to be done in the area.”

The Rocky Pines fire was first reported yesterday, May 3, with the BC Wildfire Service dashboard listing the time of ignition at 4:42 a.m.

Charlene Joe, the Acting Fire Chief of the Lower Nicola Indian Band, says one of her members came across the fire around 11:30 a.m. Tuesday morning.

“We just happened upon it and yeah, decided ‘well, today is as good a day as any to finish this burn,'” Joe said, noting the area was on their list of places to burn, just not yesterday.

“It was a steep embankment, there was a lot of dry fuel in there so instead of putting it out and then someone else going in there and leaving an unattended campfire or a cigarette butt, we decided that we would just do that burn to protect the reserve from future fires.”

Joe says she is not sure what started this fire, but notes things could have gotten much worse if they hadn’t come across it when they did.

“We decided to go with a controlled burn with BC Wildfire and then we don’t have to worry about it for this summer,” Joe said.

She says the LNIB is about 90 per cent done with a series of planned burns around Rocky Pines and Shulus as a preventative measure ahead of this summer’s wildfire season.