An abandoned campfire is believed to be the cause of another fire in the Central Okanagan.

Fire crews responded to a reported wildfire on the Myra Forestry Service Road just after 2 p.m. Tuesday.

Assistant Kelowna Fire Chief, Lou Wilde, says they believe the fire was human caused.

“It appears it was started by an abandoned campfire. That’s one of the most time consuming things the forestry department has to deal with right now, checking on abandoned campfires,” say Wilde.

He says there was a total of 35 fire fighters from the Kelowna department on scene.

“We also sent four bush trucks, two water tenders and a command unit. Forestry sent three initial attack crews to give us a hand with it, as well as two helicopters and one air tanker, which dropped three loads of retardant.”

Wilde says the fire was some distance from the Myra Trestles, located about one kilometre up the service road.

He says the dry conditions are very close to what they were like during the 2003 season.

“I think we’re pretty close to 2003 conditions, just being up in the bush over the weekend and on Tuesday I could see that conditions are pretty darn close to what they were like in 2003.”

According to the Kamloops Fire Information Centre, there have been more fires started this year than last year or in 2003.

This year, 301 fires have started in the Kamloops Fire Centre, of which 137 were human caused. There have been a total of 350 campfire-caused incidents.

To this point last year, there were 254 fires of which 155 were human caused and there were 235 campfire-caused incidents.

At the same time in 2003, there were a total of 225 fires of which 156 were human caused. There were 203 campfire-caused incidents.

Link: Myra Forestry fire quickly controlled