Northwest Region Fire Update: Red Lake Fire 31 Continues Burning Out of Control
Fire of Note
Red Lake 31 is remains a priority fire in the Northwest Region. This lightning-caused fire is estimated to be 11416.0ha in size and is listed as Not Under Control at this time.
The fire is located about 50km northwest of the Town of Red Lake. The community of Pikangikum is about 30km to the north-northeast of the fire. Neither community is at risk because of this fire. The fire has spread into the northern portion of Woodland Caribou Provincial Park.
The Type 1 Incident Management Team in charge of this fire, reports that progress continues to be made along the east flank. There are now twenty-three FireRanger Crews assigned to this fire and seven helicopters. Red Lake 31 will continue to receive air attack as needed.
FireRangers are facing a large area with a considerable amount of blowdown damage. Blowdown is severely damaged forested area resulting from high winds or an extreme weather event. Blowdown poses serious safety risks to FireRangers. Not only is blowdown very difficult and time consuming to manoeuvre through, it may increase the fire behaviour for the affected area by supplying a source of dry timber to the fire.
Fire Hazard
The forest fire hazard as dropped significantly in the last 24hrs and that is because of the stormy weather moving in from the west. Scattered rainfall, high relative humidity and very light winds are keeping the forest fire hazard low to moderate for most of the region. Red Lake is expected to remain under a high forest fire hazard for July 10.
- Information is available on safe outdoor fire management at www.ontario.ca/fireprevention
- For more information about the current fire situation, visit www.ontario.ca/forestfire
