Events conspire to block three highways

Extreme fire behaviour at one end and continuous heavy rain at the other has closed two of the Yukon’s main highways.

Extreme fire behaviour at one end and continuous heavy rain at the other has closed two of the Yukon’s main highways.

Highway 37 to Cassiar and Dease Lake, B.C., was closed Wednesday evening at the junction with the Alaska Highway after a wildfire went wild.

And the Dempster Highway north to Inuvik was closed again Wednesday at noon when the Ogilvie River began flooding onto the highway because of non-stop rainfall.

As of press time early this afternoon, there was no word from highway officials regarding when the two main arteries might open.

The Alaska Highway was also closed for a few hours today because of a traffic accident this morning 10 kilometres south of Fort Nelson, though it was expected to be re-opened by 3 p.m.

The wildfire burning 17 kilometres south of the Yukon-B.C. border was reported Tuesday night. It was staffed by a crew of firefighters from Watson Lake who were assisted by an air tanker group out of Whitehorse.

Some 23 firefighters were on the blaze Wednesday, with a management goal of holding it at the 19 hectares it grew to Tuesday night, B.C. fire information officer Lindsay Carnes explained this morning from her office in Smithers.

Carnes said the extreme fire behaviour displayed Wednesday evening forced the removal of firefighting staff for safety reasons.

Firefighters will not be sent back in until the management team is able to establish a new attack plan for the remote area, she said.

Carnes said re-opening the Stewart-Cassiar Highway is a priority but there’s no break in the forecast of continued hot, dry conditions for at least a week, she said.

The fire, she pointed out, grew to 100 hectares Wednesday evening, doubled in size overnight and had grown by almost 500 hectares just this morning.

“We were working it all of Wednesday and the fire behaviour was fairly quiet for most of the day,” she said.

“Then the temperature went up to 30 degrees (C), and the relative humidity dropped down to 16 per cent, which is fairly severe in terms of weather conditions for fires.

“The fire behaviour became aggressive and it turned into a rank five fire.”

Rank six is the highest, but is reserved only for wildfires which begin creating their own weather patterns.

Carnes said the Highway 37 rank five is crowning and torching in a volatile fuel source of black spruce, and is burning on both sides of the highway.

The nearest community is Lower Post, 35 kilometres to the east, and there are no individual homes nor other structures being threatened currently by the fire, she pointed out.

Seven other initial attack crews of three firefighters each were sent Tuesday from the Yukon to Fort Nelson and Dawson Creek to assist with the worsening fire situation across much of the province.

Yukon Wildland Fire Management reported this morning a three-hectare fire caused by lightning is burning in the wilderness zone 16 kilometres northwest of Watson Lake, as is under observation.

With above-seasonal temperatures baking the southern part the Yukon now, the forest fire danger rating is climbing in some areas like Whitehorse and Haines Junction, where the Kluane National Park has issued a ban on all open fires inside the park.

Meanwhile, road crews on the Dempster Highway are having to contend with continuous rain that has seen 25 centimetres fall in the last eight hours alone, Yukon highways branch spokeswoman Jennifer Magnuson said this morning.

Incessant rain forced the Dempster to close last Friday. It was re-opened Saturday, closed again Sunday and re-opened Monday but was shut down again Wednesday at kilometre 195 north of the Tombstone Territorial Park, she said.

“The Ogilvie River had gone down,” Magnuson said. “It had dropped about five inches but it is back up now and overflowing onto the road.

“There are mudslides that are happening because the ground up there is just saturated right now,” she said.

“We have crews up there working but we do not know when it will re-open; we need some co-operation from Mother Nature as well.”

Excessive water throughout the region also forced the suspension of ferry service across the Peel River Wednesday, as the river was high and floating logs and other debris were causing problems for the ferry.

The ferry shut down after 8 a.m., but was back in service at 3 p.m. yesterday.

Taylor Highway open again ...