Photo: BC Wildfire Service

Unit Crew mopping up a spot on the Keremeos Creek Wildfire

The weather could give firefighters a chance to make some headway on the Keremeos Creek wildfire.

There has been no significant growth in the fire since earlier this week, and the area even saw some rain.

“Certain sections or the fire did receive between 2 and 3 millimetres of rain last night. Any rain is great, but (it’s) not going to make a significant dent,” notes wildfire information officer Karley Desrosiers.

“But today, we are seeing that the humidity is expected to increase and temperatures will decrease slightly. So certainly gives crews a bit of a reprieve and some time to continue to make some good progress on containment.”

The favourable weather won’t last long, though.

“We are going to see kind of a ridge settle around Tuesday. We will see temperatures start to increase Tuesday, so back up into kind of the mid-30s. Today we’re expecting more in the upper 20s.

“So, mid-30s early and mid next week. And then, we are looking ahead to Thursday, is when that ridge could potentially break down and the winds and more unstable patterns associated,” Desrosiers explains.

Crews will be racing the clock to get as much containment in place as possible while the cooler and more humid weather lasts.

Evacuation orders and alerts have been lifted for several properties but Apex Mountain property owners remain out of their homes for the time being. 273 properties remain on evacuation order within Electoral Area I while 399 properties within electoral areas B, G and I are still on evacuation alert.

Highway 3A reopened Friday, after being closed for a week due to the fire.

Desrosiers says fire behaviour has stabilized along the Hwy 3A corridor. Crews are mopping up and patrolling along where the highway intersects with the Olalla Creek Forest Service Road.

She adds that the northwestern section of the fire is where BCWS is seeing the majority of the fire activity.

“But that’s also a challenging area in terms of access. So access for both ground crews and heavy equipment. So active fire in there, but still relatively stable. No significant growth. I mean, no growth that we’ve seen in the past couple of days.

They are going to start focusing on containing that section. So planning is for that, just with the challenging terrain.”

In the northeast corner, in the Yellow Lake area, crews are doing patrols, containment and mop-up.

The Keremeos Creek wildfire is listed at 6,712 hectares. Desrosier points out that that estimate could rise in the next few days with the addition of hectares burned during planned ignitions that were successfully carried out along the Olalla Creek FSR on Aug. 11.