Photo: BC RCMP

Hotspots at the Princeton wildfire are dwindling, with only about 18 to 20 remaining, down from 150 earlier this week, according to fire information officer Brendan Doyle.

The 3,300-hectare fire — which became 100 per cent contained on Saturday — is still in the mop up phase and will be for many weeks to come, according to the new Australian incident management team that took over near the start of the week.

“We are about 70 per cent through the entire fire of edge of making sure any hot spots are gone," Doyle said. "Mop up isn’t easy work, it's quite strenuous, dirty work and they are doing some great things."

The IMT from New South Wales are only in their first week of a six week deployment. There are currently 53 Australians scattered across B.C., twelve of them cleaning up the Princeton wildfire.

"Each morning, we have a briefing with our crews and they are achieving some great work out there," Doyle said. "We are certainly taking each day as it comes and we will be in B.C. as long as they [the province] needs us."

The Princeton wildfire is similar to an Australian blaze, but certain aspects of Princeton's can be more challenging, like "the hot dry southern wind," according to Doyle.

"Fortunately the systems and the way we do fires are very similar, so we’ve been able to adjust with a great handover from the Saskatchewan team, and we’ve basically hit the ground running," Doyle said.

"But there is still a lot of work to do."