Wildfire near Lillooet holding at 151 hectares after spreading quickly

After doubling in size in a matter of hours Monday, the BC Wildfire Service now knows just how big the fire burning north of Lillooet grew overnight.

Tuesday morning, BC Wildfire Service fire information officer Cassidy Martin told CityNews that the Tiffin Creek fire remained at about 60 hectares.

As of Tuesday afternoon, that number is now shown to be 151 hectares.

“The change in size today is actually just with more accurate mapping. We weren’t able to fly a helicopter all the way around it yesterday because of the smoke. So with the smoke dissipating, we were able to do an accurate GPS track around it and confirm the size at 151 [hectares]. So it’s actually hasn’t grown really much at all today,” said another information officer, Mikhail Elsay.

“Currently, we have one unit crew, four initial attack crews, two response officers, and four pieces of heavy equipment acting [on] the fire, as well as four helicopters,” Martin said.

Elsay confirms that the response hasn’t changed much since Tuesday, and neither has the fire. He says it’s still not threatening the city of Lillooet.

“So most of the growth was away from the highway and up on the the plateau. So it didn’t really grow in any direction towards any valleys,” said Elsay.

He said crews are not facing any containment challenges, and are making “good progress” on the fire.

First spotted on Monday, the Tiffin Creek fire is still considered out of control as it burns its way up a steep slope off Highway 99. It is suspected to be human-caused.

This is the 276th wildfire in B.C. so far this season, marking a stark difference from the more than 450 wildfires already burned or burning at this time last year.