Giant fires may have merged

Photo: BC Wildfire Service

South Stikine River wildfire

The BC Wildfire Service says its priority is to protect homes and properties in a Northwestern B.C. community already hammered by a wildfire.

More than two dozen buildings have been destroyed or damaged in Telegraph Creek as a roughly 90-square-kilometre blaze burns nearby, and a second fire, which the wildfire service estimates at 190 square km, burns to the east.

The wildfire service lists the blazes as separate, although Rick Boehm with the Regional District of Kitimat-Stikine believes the two fires have merged.

An evacuation alert has also been issued for Dease Lake, about 110 km northeast of Telegraph Creek, in part because of the heavy smoke from the Telegraph Creek-area fires and a third, smaller blaze about 70 km north of Dease Lake.

Elsewhere, an evacuation order was issued late Tuesday by the Regional District of Bulkley-Nechako for a rural area nearest an uncontained 60-hectare wildfire southwest of Topley, and the district expanded several other orders and alerts already in effect around three other fires.

The wildfire service lists 25 fires of note burning across B.C., while most of the province, including Haida Gwaii, is now ranked at extreme risk of a fire with heat warnings not due to be lifted for several days.