Yukon Wildland Fire Management issued a new evacuation alert this morning for a fire burning outside of Mayo in an area that is home to several small placer mining operations and the Victoria Eagle Gold Mine.

“This is an early heads up for people,” said fire information officer Haley Ritchie.

“We want people working in the area to be aware there is a fire nearby.”

The fire is being called the East McQuesten fire and is in an area off the Silver Trail on the South McQueston Road. The evacuation alert area encompasses a 20-kilometre radius around the end of the road.

It does not include the Silver Trail itself nor McQueston Lake.

The fire is currently estimated at 2,600 hectares and the evacuation alert was put in place after the fire began to move south toward the road.

There are now 31 active wildfires in the territory, but most are in wilderness areas.

Of these, four are getting full firefighting efforts, while another three fires are just getting structure protection and monitoring.

Wildland Fire is allowing the other 26 fires to burn as part of normal ecological processes.

Some local smoke could be from these fires, though most of the smoke in the region is coming from large fires in the N.W.T. and northern B.C.

Smoke forecasts are available at http://firesmoke.ca.

Ritchie said there are no communities in the area of the East McQuesten fire that she is aware of, but there may be some cabins or other structures. The fire is not threatening the main Silver Trail Highway nor the communities of Mayo and Keno.

A three-person crew of firefighters, one helicopter and a wildfire officer are working the blaze today.

This is part of a modified response, and the crews are engaged mainly in structure protection at this time.

As the fire is burning in what is mostly a wilderness area, Ritchie said, this response allows Wildland Fire to keep some crews back and available should another fire spark up elsewhere in the territory.

Ritchie advised that anyone working in the area keep at least a half tank of gas in their vehicles and have a grab-and-go bag of supplies at all times should evacuations be necessary.

This is the second evacuation alert in place in the territory. There is still an alert in place for kilometre 10 to 35 of the Silver

Trail due to the Reverse Creek fire. This alert dates back to July 9.

The new evacuation alert follows a weekend with moderate-to-heavy rains in the southern part of the territory and dryer conditions up north, but with lighting in many areas.

“It’s a mixed bag when it comes to weather,” Ritchie said about this past weekend.

Yukon Protective Services posted an update over the weekend saying eight new fires were started by lightning in the central and northern parts of the territory.

Two of the new fires were in the Rabbit Creek area near Dawson City and necessitated a full response by Wildland Fire to put them out before they got too big.

Fire crews had one of those out by 7:00 Sunday evening, while the other is still being worked by a bucketing helicopter.

Ritchie expects crews should be able to extinguish that blaze soon as well, though she could not say for sure.

Both fires were under a hectare, she said.

Wildland Fire responded last week to a 1.5-hectare blaze near Williamson Lake as well.

This fire was also in the Mayo area.

Crews were successfully able to get the fire under control, Ritchie said this morning.

Meanwhile, the Takhini Bridge fire still has about 30 firefighters working on it, including a crew of 20 from Nova Scotia who came to the region at the start of last week to relieve fatigued Yukon firefighters.

Early last week, Wildland Fire completed a 25-kilometre fire guard around the entire blaze and changed its status to being held.

They are now making incursions into the fire zone itself and putting out hot spots with hoses and hand tools.

The Takhini Bridge fire zone received seven millimetres of rain over the weekend – a significant enough amount to aid with efforts to fight the fire.

Crews are now busy removing much of the structure protection equipment like hoses and sprinklers that were placed around nearby residences when the fire was more of a threat.

More information on evacuation alerts and territorial wildfire maps are available at https://Yukon.ca/emergencies.