The Elephant Hill fire near the communities of Ashcroft, Cache Creek and Clinton saw some flare-ups today, but nothing that looks to be significant, says Fire Information Officer Claire Allen.
“We had quite strong winds in the area,” she says.
“For the most part, we didn’t see much significant growth to the fire which is great. We had pretty strong control lines that our crews have been working furiously to build over the last few days here.”
She says tomorrow will be an assessment day.
“Smoke and dust just kicked up by the wind has hindered the visibility so it’s been difficult to ascertain the exact growth, but at this time we’re not looking at anything significant which is great considering how aggressive wind speeds we did have today.”
Smoke and flare-ups were visible from along Highway 97 and Highway 1 and the BC Wildfire Service assisted with smaller incidents in the Ashcroft and Cache Creek Fire departments’ jurisdictions. A larger section of smoke was visible on the hills above Cache Creek, a part of the fire labeled Division B.
“A lot of the smoke that was kicked up today was smoke and ash and dust just from the wind. Definitely some hot spots were concerns as they might have flared up given the wind that was fueling them a bit, but our crews responded to them effectively and monitored the situation to put out any hot spots in the area.”
Tomorrow, crews will be doing a “danger tree assessment” to make sure their work areas are still safe.
On the north end of the fire, Allen says there hasn’t been much growth.
“It’s still in the vicinity of the Bonaparte River, but it has not crossed it at this time and the winds that we had today were north northwesterly, so the fire would have been pushed the opposite of that, so south southeasterly.”