The Fort à la Corne wildfire in May was the largest in Saskatchewan this year. (submitted photo/Caitlyn and Jordyn Sachkowski)

By Derek Cornet

fire update

Sask. wildfire season only a third of five-year average

Aug 31, 2020 | 5:00 PM

A mix of cool weather, precipitation and coronavirus restrictions have resulted in only a third of the wildfires that occur on average in Saskatchewan.

That’s according to Executive Director of Wildfire Management Steve Roberts, who said there has been 118 fires this year compared to the five-year average of 398. He explained even with the minimal number of fires in 2020, for the most part they were small, easy to contain and crews did a good job extinguishing them.

“We will see it tail off on fire season just because daylight hours and average temperatures will start to drop as we go into the fall,” Roberts said. “Based on that, we will be releasing some of our crews. Some of those folks go back to school. We’ll be putting some of our planes offline and into maintenance for the winter.”

The largest wildfire of the season occurred back in May near Fort à la Corne, which was mapped at more than 41,000 hectares before it was declared contained. There were no large fires to occur after it, Roberts said.

With Wildfire Management moving into the Public Safety Agency, crews used some of the extra time to assist in the provincial coronavirus response. Roberts noted other areas of work included flood mitigation projects, while remaining on standby for fires. Fire season was slow across the country and no firefighters left the province.

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“What we are seeing now is as things have lightened up a little bit with COVID, more people are on the landscape,” Roberts said. “We are getting into early hunting season and, of course, we are seeing on the agriculture side the farming season getting busy, which does generate human-caused fires for us, so we will be keeping our eyes on that.”

Although the number of crews will begin to wind down, Roberts mentioned some will remain active in case of any fire activity this fall. He said there’s still somewhat of a hazard in southern Saskatchewan, which is of concern.

The La Ronge Regional Fire Department also had a below-average year with Deputy-Fire Chief Keaton Cloud reporting 113 calls for service to date with 121 at this time last year. He said bush and grass fires have been particularly low.

“This is in contrast to what was originally forecasted for this year, however, with the global pandemic, the precipitation is welcomed to keep the threat of wildfires at bay,” Cloud said. “Both an evacuation and a pandemic at once would be difficult to ensure Saskatchewan Health Authority COVID guidelines are followed.”

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derek.cornet@jpbg.ca

Twitter: @saskjourno