An Evacuation Order has been issued for a small portion of the District of Wells due to a wildfire.
Mayor Ed Coleman confirms that the order is for a small mine site and some lake areas in the Eight and Nine Mile Lake Areas.
“There’s no properties but people do some back country recreating in there, so we just have to make sure they get out of there if they are in there.”
Coleman says the rest of Wells and the immediate Cariboo Regional District Area adjacent to the District are under and Evacuation Alert.
That impacts roughly 340 parcels of land.
“We have an Emergency Operations Centre set up in Wells, and I am just setting one up in Quesnel in case we have to evacuate.”
Coleman says the Cornish Mountain Wildfire is pretty close.
“The distance from the center of the fire to downtown Wells is 2.5 kilometers, so that is very close. And as far as smoke, right now it settled down over night, but it is an out-of-control fire. We’ve got 6 skimmer water bombers coming in probably within the hour, and they’ll be bombing it all day. They’ll take water out of Jack of Club Lake.”
Coleman says the fire is now more than 70 hectares in size but conditions are ideal right now to fight the fire.
“The winds are west. Any kind of cold front, clouds that come in could cause it to shift east so back toward us. But right now we couldn’t have a better opportunity to hammer this thing, and all the contracting partners that we have are putting a fire guard around the event, and they’ve been doing that all night. So lots of heavy equipment putting a guard around this thing.”
Coleman says structure protection units are also on there way from Prince George and those will go to the mine site.
He says they are watching a couple of other wildfires in the area as well, one about 5 kilometres north of Barkerville and the other in the Bowron Lake area.
–Files by George Henderson, My Cariboo Now
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