Rain expected to hit parts of northern Saskatchewan wildfires

Rain in north-central parts of Saskatchewan on Tuesday was set to give some help to crews battling some of the province’s wildfires.

According to Environment Canada, heavy rain fell in areas around Melfort, Tisdale, Nipawin, Hudson Bay and Porcupine Plain.

“(The rain system) will not cover all of the northern forest part of the province. It will likely touch some of the fires, the southern parts of those fires, and proceed into central Saskatchewan over the next day and a half,” Steve Roberts, the vice-president of operations for the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency, said during a conference call with media.

Where the rain does hit, Roberts said the temperature will drop and the humidity will rise.

“We will be able to make much significant headway on some of these fires (and) secure portions of them … And once we are able to secure those fires and slow their growth, we’ll also reduce smoke emissions which, of course, will benefit our evacuees,” he said.

Roberts said the large amount of smoke has also caused problems with firefighting activities.

“(It has hurt) both to get into these fires and get crews on the ground, but also to assess where we might have risks and threats by these fires,” he said.

Roberts said the fires have been extremely aggressive because of the spring conditions. He also said that’s one of the reasons there are more fires — and bigger fires — right now than at this time in past years.

“We often have a number of fires but rarely do they get as large as this, and primarily the shortage of spring rain and lack of green up allowed these fires to grow quickly,” said Roberts.

As of 10 o’clock Tuesday morning, there were 23 active wildfires in Saskatchewan. There had been 183 in the province to date, several more than the five-year average of 106.

Two of the largest fires, the Shaw and Smith fires, were more than 100,000 hectares in size.

Roberts said the rain on Tuesday was the same system that was being seen in Alberta and the Northwest Territories.

“Now that we’re starting to see some rain and the trees will leaf out a little bit more, we should see some moderation,” he said.

In response to a question about whether Saskatchewan’s crews were fighting fires as aggressively as possible, Roberts said they do manage the fires as aggressively as they can but they don’t deal with each fire as if they all have equal value.

He explained there’s a hierarchy depending on if the fire is threatening people and resources. He explained they have to focus their resources.

“Canada’s seeing larger, more aggressive fire seasons and those resources have to be used efficiently, as best we can,’ said Roberts.

There were still dozen of people as of Tuesday morning who’d moved out of their home communities that were waiting to go back, but there was no word on when that might be for any of them yet.

The smoke from the wildfires resulted in special air quality statements for areas across western and northern Saskatchewan.