Crews extinguish two fires in Lake Country on weekend

Firefighters in Lake Country were busy this weekend responding to fires on both Saturday and Sunday.

On Saturday, the Lake Country Fire Department responded to a fire that started in a garden on a property off of Highway 97, south of Robinson Road, fire chief Steve Windsor said. 

“This time of year you get bark mulch and you get dampness on it and it starts to generate its own heat,” Windsor said. The fire started in a garden on the property.

Another fire began on Sunday morning in a large slash pile about the size of an excavator on a rural property in Carr’s Landing, Winsdor said.

The property is roughly 50 acres in size and Windsor believes a spark that had been smouldering since the property owners had last burned the pile during the burning season had reignited, he said. The property is also fenced-off, which makes it unlikely that it was human-caused.

It’s hard to know that there’s a spark in a pile of wood or mulch unless you see the smoke coming up from the ground, similar to what crews saw in the Carr’s Landing fire, he said. Typically for this time of year, fires are more likely started from cigarette butts than from damp bark mulch, he said.

The fires did not threaten any structures or damage properties.

To contact a reporter for this story, email Carli Berry or call 250-864-7494 or email the editor. You can also submit photos, videos or news tips to the newsroom and be entered to win a monthly prize draw.

We welcome your comments and opinions on our stories but play nice. We won't censor or delete comments unless they contain off-topic statements or links, unnecessary vulgarity, false facts, spam or obviously fake profiles. If you have any concerns about what you see in comments, email the editor in the link above.