NEWS: LITTLE FORT HEREFORDS PLAN CELEBRATION ▼ A9
Times
Thursday, August 1, 2013 ▼ Volume 48 No. 31 ▼ www.clearwatertimes.com ▼ $1.35 Includes GST
THE
NORTH THOMPSON
AVOLA RENOS:
Second Place General Excellence B.C. and Yukon <2,000 circulation 2012
Upgrades to log schoolhouse nearly done. See page A20 inside.
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Below-average fire season expected to heat up Kamloops This Week
Clearwater hosts kayak fest Kayakers on the Clearwater River paddle past Spahats Creek during preliminaries for the downriver race at Clearwater Kayak Festival 2013. Paddlers from all over the world took part in the event, which was held the July 27/28 weekend. For more photos, see pages A10 and A11 inside. Photo by Keith McNeill
A decade ago, residents of the Kamloops region were sweltering through a heat wave that had seen daily highs rarely dip below 30 C. The city — and the Interior — was resigned to another hot summer, blissfully unaware that, within a week, one of the worst wildfire seasons to hit the area was about to erupt. From the first spark that started a massive wildfire in McClure on July 30 to the spreading devastation that devoured homes in Kelowna in the weeks that followed, 2003 is likely remembered for evacuations, smoke and tired, heroic firefighters. This year’s fire season is a long way from that time, said Michaela Swan, a fire-information officer in the Kamloops fire centre. As of July 24, the centre had dealt with just 106 wildfires, well below the 10-year average of 243, Swan said. By this point in 2009, for example, there had been 428 fires and, just before the conflagration broke out in 2003, there had been just 236 wildfires by this time. In 2011 — one of the quieter seasons for the centre, Swan said — there had been just 94 fires. In terms of land this year’s crop of fires has engaged, the total to this week is 1,684 hectares, also down from the 10-year average of 2,546. However, said Kayla Pepper, another fire-information officer with the Kamloops centre, the expectation is the numbers will start to increase substantially. “We haven’t seen any lightning storms yet,” Pepper said, “but we’re expecting them to start.” Experience has shown that, at the end of the fire season, which officially begins April 1,
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the total number of fires that will be fought will be split evenly between person- and lightningcreated. To date, however, the major-
“We’re expecting
the drying trend to continue.
”
Kayla Pepper
ity have been person-caused, she said. The fire rating remains high in Kamloops and at extreme in other parts of the centre, Pepper said, and the tinder is dry. “We’re expecting the drying trend to continue.” The Kamloops Fire Centre stretches from the northern border of Wells Gray Park near Blue River to the United States border to the south, and from the Bridge River Glacier west of Gold Bridge to the Monashee Mountains east of Lumby. Based out of Kamloops, it employs 47 permanent staff and a large number of seasonal support staff, including dispatchers and firefighters. Of the 234 highly trained seasonal firefighters, 81 are members of three-person initial-attack crews. They are usually the first deployed to a fire and travel by either helicopter or truck. The other 140 firefighters are divided into seven 20-person crews that generally work on larger fires.
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