B.C. Wildfire ‘feeling good’ about Brenda Creek fire

The 824-hectare Brenda Creek wildfire burning near the Okanagan Connector has been relatively calm, but that could change in the days ahead.

“I just want to caution people that although the fire looks calm, we are expecting drier, windier conditions over the next several days with no precipitation at all in our near future,” Mike McCauley of the B.C. Wildfire Service said in a fire briefing today, July 26.

"We will be on high alert, watching closely for any change in activity but for now we're feeling fairly comfortable about where this fire is at.”

Comfort doesn’t mean there’s been no growth, however. McCauley said the fire has grown to the southeast due to yesterday’s southwest winds.

“The fire has been relatively calm today though, we saw this morning a nice inversion over the fire that leaves the smoke sitting down low,” he said. 

“We’re still feeling good about this fire. If you look down in the lower left-hand corner (of the picture above) we have a little bit of spotting into the heavier timber and our crews will be focused in that area trying to action targets. Further down in the gully that you can see in the background it’s very steep to put machine guard in so we've been using handguard down in that line.”

McCauley said the fire is working its way down that gully and chewing through the fuel, which is not a bad thing.

“That sort of takes away the risk,” he said. “We do know that on this fire we removed the structural protection sprinkler lay — the high volume water system that we have under the transmission line — that's also good news and we're doing that because the risk is obviously lower.”

B.C. Wildfire will keep structural protection on some cabins in the Headwaters Creek area that will stay for a little while yet.

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