Evacuation order issued north of Spences Bridge after 2 wildfires merge
Posted July 18, 2024 7:22 am.
Last Updated July 18, 2024 9:14 pm.
The Thompson-Nicola Regional District issued an evacuation order for properties north of Spences Bridge in the Fraser Canyon on Wednesday night as a massive wildfire in the area threatens life and property.
The evacuation order covers 76 properties west of Highway 1, from Spences Bridge, Cook’s Ferry Indian Band, to just south of Ashcroft.
Just after 7 a.m. on Thursday, the BC Wildfire Service said the Shetland Creek Wildfire, first discovered on July 12, had grown to 285 hectares in size and was about 7.5 kilometres north of Spences Bridge.
The Teit Creek Wildfire was estimated to be 249 hectares in size and was burning about 5.5 kilometres north of Spences Bridge.
In an update just after 9:30 a.m., BCWS Wildfire Operations director Cliff Chapman shared that the two fires actually merged on Wednesday afternoon, creating one massive fire, and is now being referred to only as the Shetland Creek Fire.
By Thursday morning, the merged fire was believed to be 4,125 hectares in size, almost eight times larger than it was Wednesday night.
As of 1 p.m. Thursday, the BCWS says the Shetland Creek Fire “has aggressively grown to an estimated 4,989 hectares.”
“Yesterday, the decision was made to send an incident management team to that fire. They arrived late last night and are still [there] this morning,” Chapman said.
The Kamloops Fire Centre says the wildfire is suspected to have been sparked by lightning, igniting trees or other fuels in the area.
Chapman says two unit crews and four initial attack crews, “in the neighborhood of 55 individuals,” are supporting fire suppression efforts, in addition to the structure protection and defence personnel and specialists working in the valley.
“The last update I received, there was no impact to structures, although they are threatened, that’s why the order is in place,” he explained.
“We’ll be focusing our efforts, the incident management team and our ground resources, on trying to protect those structures today.
“That fire saw aggressive fire behavior as we entered into the evening last night, what we would consider rank four and rank five, and the suppression efforts were really challenged on the ground, and so our efforts really focused on trying to ensure that we got people of the evacuation orders area safely and quickly,” Chapman said.
For the first time this wildfire season, the BCWS used its night vision capable aircraft to fight the Shetland Creek Fire, Chapman explained.
“It came over from Penticton to support and to ensure that our crews were safe on the ground, and to support both the evacuation order and getting people out,” he added.
The TNRD evacuation orders come after the Cook’s Ferry Indian Band issued an evacuation order for its Nicoelton Reserve on Tuesday night. The Band issued the order “in the interest of life and safety,” while it also put in place evacuation alerts for three more of its reserves.
Those evacuation orders were expanded on Wednesday night, and now include IR 5, 6, 8a, 19 Firstly, and 22, according to Kúkpi7 Chief Christine Walkem.
“If you are in these areas you must leave immediately. Residents to register with ESS at address on the notice,” Walkem said on social media.
The Band also extended its evacuation alerts to cover IR 5a, 8, 9, 10, 11, 11a, 18 and 20.
Chapman said Thursday that the weather over the last week, in particular in the Fraser Valley and the Fraser Canyon, saw a change from a “stable airmass to an unstable airmass, meaning an increase in wind.”
“That increase in wind pushed that fire over the ridge and combined the Tait Creek and Shetland Fire together and created a flame front. That wind had a lot of energy to push the fire down the valley,” he explained.
Meanwhile, the BCWS says more than 30 new wildfires have been sparked in the past 24 hours, with seven of those in the Nelson area.
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