Sept. 21 – Danger very high, but no new wildfires

Pearl Lorentzen
Lakeside Leader

September 16 to 18, the fire danger remained very high in the Slave Lake Forest Area, with a fire advisory in effect. On Sept. 19, the danger dipped down to high. On Oct. 20, the danger returned to very high and stayed there.

The forest area has an advisory which prohibits “any burning without a valid fire permit, other than a campfire.”

However, there were no new wildfires, with the most recent one a very small grass fire on Sept. 10. From January 1 to Sept. 16, the Slave Lake Forest Area had 132 wildfires, which burnt 429,009.05 hectares (ha).

All but 12 of these were extinguished.

The active wildfires hadn’t changed status for over a month. These were two held and 10 under control wildfires. The two held wildfires were SWF103 and SWF081. Chipewyan Lake was the closest community to these two wildfires. Neither was threatening that community. SWF116 was the newest active wildfire. Lightning started it on July 7. It remained at 10,670 ha.

Smoke was very heavy in the area on Sept. 17, but this was from far away in Alberta, the Northwest Territories or BC, say www.firesmoke.ca.

This article is updated weekly. In the meantime, the most up to day wildfire information is on the Alberta Wildfire Status Dashboard. Road closures are available at 511 Alberta. A list of active wildfire evacuations and alerts are Alberta Emergency Alerts. Once a day when the wildfire danger is high, very high, or extreme, Alberta Wildfire publishes Slave Lake Forest Area updates at https://srd.web.alberta.ca/slave-lake-area-update. For Peace River Forest Area updates go to https://srd.web.alberta.ca/peace-river-area-update. Smith, Hondo, and Flatbush are in the Lac La Biche Forest Area for updates go to https://srd.web.alberta.ca/lac-la-biche-area-update. People interested in the smoke forecast can go to firesmoke.ca.