BC Wildfire Services actively working on a wildfire near Barkerville

BC Wildfire Service says a dedicated Incident Management Team is deploying to the Groundhog Complex wildfires, which includes a wildfire of note.

The Antler Creek Wildfire, 3 kilometres east of the District of Wells and Barkerville Historic Town and Park, is burning at 3,380 hectares as of Monday evening, according to the BCWS.

Information Officer with the Groundhog Complex Madison Dahl says the size of the wildfire will change in the coming days and BCWS should have more accurate measurements.

Dahl says the Antler Creek Wildfire has a full response from crews.

“We have crews, aviation, heavy equipment and structure protection in response,” she said. “We are not doing overnight operations, but they will start again first thing in the morning.”

Dahl says the wildfire is close to some communities, but it is not impacting these communities at this point.

“We do have structure protection specialists who have been deployed to the area,” she said. “They are working with local teams, and they are also working with Barkerville staff.”

She says the entire town of Barkerville is covered in structure protection sprinklers.

“Every building has a sprinkler and other local areas and assets have been identified and have structured protection deployed to them,” Dahl said.

She tells CityNews that on Sunday there was a lot of smoke and it was very visible but it has settled as of Monday.

“The smoke has settled, where the smoke settles it helps to decrease fire behaviour,” she said.

Dahl says the decrease in smoke and plumes means there is a decrease in fire behaviour.

In a social media post, BCWS says the size of the fire may increase due to it merging with other small wildfires but crews worked with heavy equipment to establish control lines.

“Structure Protection Specialists have deployed systems in Barkerville and surrounding areas,” it said. “These systems are used to create a humidity bubble around identified assets in order to increase the relative humidity and minimize how embers impact structures ahead of wildfires.”

-With files from Anthony Atanasov.