2 wildfires near Kamloops grew over weekend: BCWS

The BC Wildfire Service says two wildfires in Kamloops have grown Monday afternoon.

The two wildfires between Spences Bridge and Ashcroft have “increased” in size, according to BCWS. They are both reportedly observing rank 3 and rank 4 behaviour.

“This means a moderately vigorous surface fire with an organized flame front, occasional candling and a moderate-to-fast rate of spread,” the service said.

It says helicopters are continuing to bucket water where objects have been identified and no structures are threatened by the fires.

One of the two fires, numbered K70910, around 7.5 kilometres north of Spences Bridge, sits at 10 hectares and was first discovered on July 12.

The other fire, K70913, around 5.5 kilometres north of Spences Bridge, sits at 11 hectares and was discovered on July 13.

BCWS Information Officer Olive Norris-Leite says three helicopters are working on cooling and bucketing fire number K70910.

“(The) fire is an organized flame front with moderate to fast rate of spread and also including short aerial bursts into the forest canopy,” she said. “We did have to pull crews back to the safe zone so there’s currently no ground resources on site due to safety concerns.”

She says the fire has released a good amount of smoke because of the increased behaviour, due to hot and dry weather.

For K10913, Norris-Leite says the terrain is very steep and they were “unable to action it with ground crews” but other resources are being used and there was no threat to any values or structures.

According to the service, both fires were originally suspected to be caused by lightning.

-With files from Anthony Atanasov.