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Vacation plans for campers and cabin owners alike are being affected by wildfires in northern Saskatchewan.
Eight campgrounds at Narrow Hills Provincial Park and the Churchill River campground at Lac La Ronge Provincial Park will stay closed until Monday. And people with cabins in the area have been told they’re on evacuation standby, or already have left.
David Sereda went to his family’s cabin at Lower Fishing Lake on Wednesday and was planning to leave Tuesday. When he saw a crew setting up barricades on the highway near his cabin, he figured his vacation plans were changing.
“There’s not a lot of people around,” he said Friday as the nearby campground emptied out. “I suspect it’s getting pretty quiet here.”
Other family members were set to join him over the weekend, but instead, Sereda was forced to take a few detours to get back home in Moose Jaw.
“(The plan) has obviously changed now. We’ll just close up shop and get here another time,” he said.
Becky Hoehn, the acting executive director at the Ministry of Parks, Culture and Sport, said the closures of campgrounds are a safety precaution.
“None of our campgrounds are under the pressure of any fire right in the neighbourhood, but we’re doing this all in the effort to be immensely safe,” she said Friday afternoon just as campgrounds were beginning to close.
Hoehn couldn’t say how many people were already at campsites or how many people were being sent home from provincial parks.
“It’s a precautionary measure,” Hoehn reiterated. “We don’t want to bring people into a situation that could potentially change over the weekend.”
The closures at Narrow Hills Provincial Park include:
- Lower Fishing Lake Campground
- Zeden Lake Campground
- Ispuchaw Lake Campground
- Group Campsites (Rangers Beach, Lakeview, Group Tenting 1, Group Tenting 2)
- Overflow camping at Lower Fishing Lake
Visitors will receive a full refund through the online booking system. Visitors are advised to check their email or phone number used to book the campsite for additional information and updates.
The decision to close provincial campgrounds was made in discussion with the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency. The closures are only for the campgrounds listed and not for property owners in the area.
Highway closures in the area are also limiting access to certain lakes on provincial Crown land.
Hoehn said it’s nearly impossible to predict what a wildfire could do over the span of a weekend, so other provincial park campgrounds could close until more fires are under control.
— With files from 650 CKOM’s Sheena Roszell
