Some shocking numbers from Cariboo Regional District Chair Al Richmond today.
He says more than half of the area in the CRD has now been impacted by the wildires burning in the region…
“What tells the story, puts in perspective a little better, is the area…in 2010, we had 29 thousand square kilometres impacted by the fires and this year, the area of the Cariboo Regional District is just over 80 thousand square kilometres, and of that 42 thousand square kilometres are now impacted by these fires.”
Richmond says more than two thousand people are under evacuation order in the Cariboo-Chilcotin and almost another 23 thousand, including those in the City of Williams Lake, are on evacuation alert.
He says once piece of good news this morning…
“We were able to downgrade the Canim-Hawkins Lake order to an alert today, those folks have gone home. As well as the first nations community of Canim Lake so we did a joint release this morning. So those 500 plus people have now gone home. ”
Richmond says they are constantly looking at opportunities to reduce or to allow people to go home.
He says one community that has been out for over 30 days is Spokin Lake, and he says they would really like to send those folks home.