Progress being reported on wildfires in the Wells area

   The Mayor of Wells says the fire situation is much better than it was a couple of days ago.

   Ed Coleman says the fire that has a small portion of his community on evacuation order and the rest on alert is still out of control, but they have made progress.

   “The Cornish Mountain Fire, the one right next to Wells, it’s guarded 70 percent.  There are multiple crews on it, and they’ll get the rest the rest of the 30 percent done between today and tomorrow.  So that fire is out of control but it is going to have a whole guard on it and it’s settled down, so basically we’re very positive about that.”

   “There are a lot of different fires, some of them are quite remote, but they’ve got full resources coming to deal with them.  I was surprised how dry the balsam is.  The balsam, there is a dead standing balsam, and those trees are burning right to the top.  A lot more fuel being burnt up, but that’s just the nature of  some of the trees that have aged and gone dead over time.   We know we’ve got 30 percent trees over time that have died, or beetle kill, and then we’ve got 70 percent healthy,  But it’s those dry trees that create the fuel.”

   Coleman says the interphase fires near Barkerville, Wells and Bowron Lake are very well resourced.

   “The fire near Barkerville.  They’ve got machinery going in there, there’s helicopters surveying plus hitting some hot spots, and there’s full crews coming in on that one.   And then there is another set at Bowron that are away from the chain but around the chain, and they have full crews coming in on that set as well.”

   Coleman says the support from the province has been fantastic.

   He says there is blue sky out there right now and very little smoke.

   As for when the order or alerts might be taken down, Coleman says a number of people would be involved in that decision but they will assess the situation again tomorrow.