The wildfire at Canim Lake has grown to 1,640 hectares as of Sunday morning, according to BC Wildfire officials.
The majority of the growth over the past two days has been towards the southeast, information officer Erin Bull said.
“We will experience some growth on all sides, but the majority continues to be on the southeast flank,” Bull said.
Though the Canim Lake area did experience some rainfall Saturday night, Bull said the accumulation wasn’t substantial.
“But the strong winds that may have been affecting the fire behaviour in other areas of the fire centre didn’t seem to affect the Canim lake area, so that certainly worked in our favour,” she said.
Bull said there are currently 13 pieces of heavy equipment and 21 firefighters working on building contingency lines on the fire at the south end of Canim Lake.
“They’re looking to establish access points to the fire and determine the best points to put those fire guards in,” she said, noting that helicopters would be undertaking bucket drops on the fire “off and on throughout the day.”
Across the lake, increased fire behaviour from the Succour Lake wildfire Saturday is what prompted the expanded evacuation alert on the north side of Canim Lake, Bull confirmed.
The alert was issued by the Cariboo Regional District for nearly 153 parcels of land north of Canim Lake along Canim-Hendrix Lake Road; it followed an alert earlier in the day for 243 properties south of Canim Lake along Mahood Lake Road, Canim Lake Road South and Higgins Lake, prompted by the Canim Lake fire.
The Succour Lake fire is now listed as a fire of note in the Cariboo Fire Centre, and was last measured at 508 hectares.
“The recommendation for the evacuation alert was done due to observed fire behaviour and an expected increased behaviour due to funnel winds forecast for the area over the next few days,” Bull explained.
There are 21 firefighters on site of the Succour Lake, working to establish a hose lay around a 12-hectare spot fire on the southeast flank, between the main fire and Canim-Hendrix Lake Road.
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