The village of Mayo was evacuated over the weekend as the Talbot Creek fire continues to move closer to the community.

It is now about four kilometres south of Mayo, and has also caused the closure of the Silver Trail Highway.

The order includes all properties between kilometres 35 and 66 of the Silver Trail, and affects about 450 people.

Fire crews are currently trying to protect the community by taking a “defensive attack” position to prevent the fire moving closer to the village, fire information officer Haley Ritchie told a press conference this morning in Whitehorse.

This capped a busy weekend for Yukon Wildland Fire Management with new evacuation alerts, road closures and the re-evacuation of the Eagle gold mine north of the village.

“Over the weekend, there was a significant increase in wildfire activity,” Community Services Minister Richard Mostyn told the press conference.

Reinforcements are currently on the way to help, with fire crews from several provinces arriving early this week.

More lightning followed by dry conditions have meant a continuation of an already-long Yukon wildfire season.

“Normally, we’d be in wrap-up mode by now,” Mostyn said of the fire season.

There are now 126 active wildfires in the territory, with firefighting crews fully responding to 11 of those and providing come sort of containment efforts to 11 more.

The rest are in wilderness areas and will be allowed to burn as long as they don’t threaten people or structures.

The Mayo fire is now listed at 4,000 hectares and is being fought by 40 Wildland Fire personnel along with six planes and four helicopters.

When the evacuation order was issued at about 1 p.m. Sunday, the fire was about seven kilometres away, but it has grown and crept closer to the village since.

Currently, the fire is south of the Stewart River. Ritchie said that since last night, the fire has been moving primarily more west than north, while staying on the other side of the Stewart River.

“So that’s good news in some ways,” she said.

Due to the size of the fire, Ritchie said crews are not trying to extinguish it, but are trying to prevent it from moving toward the village, and are putting in structure protection like sprinklers and hoses.

They are also building a guard between the village and the fire using bulldozers. If conditions are right, they may do some active lighting of back-burns to try to make this guard bigger and more effective.

Ritchie hopes changing winds and cooler temps over the coming days will help in the firefighting efforts.

Under the supervision of Wildland Fire, volunteers went door-to-door to inform residents of the evacuation.

According to Greg Blackjack, the director of the Yukon Emergency Measures Organization, many people were not home when crews were knocking.

He urged anyone who has evacuated from Mayo to call 867-332-4597 so they can get an accurate count.

Evacuees began arriving in Whitehorse on Sunday, and were provided hotel rooms or rooms in Normandy House for seniors (see p. 3).

The Canada Games Centre is also being set up to house evacuees, though it has not needed to be put into operation yet.

The village of Keno and the nearby Hecla mine were put on evacuation alert due to the Mayo fire. Ritchie said this fire is not threatening the village directly, but the alert was put in place due to threats to the highway.

Not far from Mayo, the East McQuesten fire has also forced the Victoria Gold Corp. to re-evacuate their employees from the Eagle mine.

This is a voluntary evacuation, and is being undertaken by the company on the recommendation of Wildland Fire Management.

The mine was initially evacuated on July 29, but workers were allowed to return to the site on Aug. 1.

When the first evacuation took place, the fire was around 5,000 hectares. It has now grown to 12,543 hectares according to this morning’s estimate listed on Wildland Fire’s public map.

An alert is still in place for the Dublin Gulch area due to that fire.

Evacuation alerts are also still in place for kilometres 10 to 35 of the Silver Trail Highway due to the Reverse Creek fire and in the Sixtymile area near the Top of the World Highway due to the Mount Nolan fire. These alerts all date back to last month.

An alert simply seeks to make sure people are aware of a fire and are ready to flee if necessary, while an evacuation order makes it mandatory for people to leave.

The North Klondike Highway and the Dempster Highway were both closed on Sunday night due to fires, but those closures have since been rescinded.

“The Dempster and the North Klondike Highway have been closed intermittently throughout the weekend,” Mostyn said.

He encouraged people heading out onto any of these highways to check Yukon 511 before they leave. In a stroke of luck and timing, there are several crews of Yukon Wildfire fighters scheduled to arrive in the territory this week from several provinces to help deal with all of this.

A small initial attack team from Newfoundland, along with two fire specialists from Ontario are already here.

Today, four initial attack crews were set to arrive from Saskatchewan and four more initial attack crews are coming from Newfoundland tomorrow.

These crews will have four people each, Ritchie said.

Then, on Wednesday, another 20-person crew will be coming in from Nova Scotia.

Ritchie said this unit will most likely consist of more initial attack crews and will be different people than those Nova Scotia firefighters who were stationed here in July.

“We’re grateful to have seen an increase in resources shared with us from across the country to help fight these fires,” Mostyn said.

Ritchie said they hoped to send more resources to the Old Crow area to fly over the fires there and keep monitoring that situation, though she said the community is not under threat at the moment.

The fires there have blanketed the community with so much smoke that some people have self-evacuated 
to Whitehorse.

They have also caused the community to call out for more resources to be dedicated to fire preparation in that community in case the situation should worsen.

Other significant fires are being monitored, including two in the Teslin area.

One of those is 37 kilometres northwest of Johnson’s Crossing and is estimated at 750 kilometres in size.

That fire necessitated structure protection being placed in two areas on Sunday.

The other Teslin fire is 13 kilometres from Nisutlin Bay on the Wolf River and is not considered a threat at this time, according to a posting on Facebook by Yukon Protective Services.

A fire at the Copper Haul Quarries in Whitehorse received a full effort from initial attack crews over the weekend and was declared “out” by noon Sunday.

And the Takhini Bridge fire that threatened communities in the Ibex Valley earlier in the summer had some reports of smoke coming from it.

After fire crews assessed it by air, they decided the activity was inside a secure perimeter they’d created around the fire and was not a threat.