More help is arriving today from out of province as the Ministry of Natural Resource and Forestry continues to battle forest fires in Northeastern Ontario.
A total of 106 fire rangers from Nova Scotia, PEI, Newfoundland/Labrador, Northwest Territories, and Alberta are arriving along with a 19-person incident management team from Alberta and 10 support staff from Alberta and Saskatchewan.
Reports of smoke have been noted from areas across the central portion of the northeast. Smoke drift from fires in the Temagami, River Valley and the Lady Evelyn-Smoothwater Provincial Park areas is the main cause associated with smoke conditions.
The MNRF is expecting a southwesterly wind today which is expected to cause smoke drift towards the northeast.
They are predicting existing fires to be active today before cloud cover moves into the region overnight Friday.
Three CL415’s were working on North bay 72 Wednesday evening, which originated in Lady Evelyn-Smoothwater Provincial Park and has now spread northeast outside the park boundary. FireRangers were in Kenbeec/Kerns Wednesday night setting up sprinklers in the community as a precaution. Good progress was made on North Bay 69 on Wednesday as fire crews and heavy helicopters were effective in reducing fire activity for this fire which is the closest to the Temagami community.
Crews from British Columbia were assigned to North Bay 55 on Wednesday and have been working to suppress this fire.
Air attack was dispatched to this fire later in the day to aid with firefighting activities.
Incident Management Teams (IMTs) have mobilized in the region and are preparing to take over priority fires in 3 areas:
- River Valley Cluster
- Lake Temagami Cluster
- Lady Evelyn Cluster
