By Stephanie Froese

Northern fire evacuees set to go home

Jun 6, 2011 | 2:44 PM

Evacuees from a forest fire in Northern Saskatchewan are set to start returning home, Tuesday.

People were evacuated from the communities of the Hamlet of Wollaston Lake and Hatchet Lake First Nation after a massive forest fire was within a kilometre of the communities.

Steve Roberts, the provincial executive director of the Wildfire Management Program said the size of the fire area hasn't changed in the last five days and continues to sit at around 44 square kilometres.

The threat to the communities has lowered, however as the fire moves away.

Duane McKay, Provincial Fire Commissioner and Director of Emergency Response, said they will start flying people out of Saskatoon and Prince Albert tomorrow.

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“We’ll fly them from the reception centers back right into their community,” McKay said.

“Unless there’s something really odd shows up we’re scheduled to start mid-morning Tuesday.”

Emergency Social Services Manager Norm Vetter said the general public will be the first to fly home.

“Essentially our shelter managers are right now gearing up and trying to prepare for the return so they’re talking with community leaders and with health to identify the high needs persons that may need to stay behind,” Vetter said.

Vetter said they hope to have all the people in evacuation centers and in hotels back to their communities, Wednesday.

Besides the flames, one of the main barriers in returning people home was the amount of smoke in the communities.

Roberts said currently smoke is less of a direct factor but they are continuing to monitor the situation.

He said cooler weather over the past several days has helped crew while they set up barriers around the communities, but it has also made it harder to find the hot spots.

“As a result even though there may be fuel in that fire area that hasn’t burned up its not warm enough to produce enough smoke for us to detect it,” Roberts said.

He said things are drying up today so it would not be unusual to see some increased fire activity.
There were no injuries and no structural loss in this fire.

sfroese@panow.com