It could be another month before crews depart the scene of an out-of-control wildfire burning in Nova Scotia’s Annapolis County that has destroyed homes and forced more than 1,000 residents from the area, an official with the province’s Natural Resources Department said Wednesday.
Jim Rudderham, director of fleet and forest protection, said it’s going to take a lot of resources and logistics to extinguish the wildfire near Long Lake, which has doubled in size over the past several days to 8,278 hectares or about 82 square kilometres.
He said the timeline for crews heading home depends on the area receiving some much-needed rain.
“There’s a lot of equipment on that fire. It has to be put out. It has to be patrolled. Then all the equipment has to be removed. So it’s going to take some time,” Rudderham told CBC Radio’s Information Morning Cape Breton.
“We do need weather…. We need the help from Mother Nature right now.”
The wildfire broke out on Aug. 13 and some of the crew members have been there ever since.
To that end, an incident management team from Ontario will be arriving Wednesday to take over for the Nova Scotia crew that has been leading the charge for the first two weeks, said Rudderham. The team manages the logistics and strategy of fighting the fire, he said.
Rudderham said these crews were also dealing with a number of wildfires around the province before Long Lake broke out, including a fire near Susie Lake in Halifax, which the department announced Tuesday was fully extinguished.
“We’re all tired and they need time to rest,” he said, adding that team will be back in two weeks.
“Our crews have been busy all summer … So even before this fire started, they were very busy attacking other fires, putting them out — fires that many people never even heard about.”
He added that there’s “a lot of people doing a lot of very hard work to try to contain this fire.”
“It’s quite discouraging when all their work is tested, as it was on Sunday,” said Rudderham.
On Tuesday, Premier Tim Houston said volatile conditions were preventing officials from determining how many homes have been lost or damaged in the fire, following a harrowing weekend that saw high winds push the fire north, forcing an expanded evacuation order now affecting more than 1,000 people.
Dustin Enslow, deputy warden of the Municipality of the County of Annapolis, said everyone whose home has been damaged or lost has been notified. He said those numbers will likely be released Wednesday afternoon.
“As you can imagine, when we notified people, there’s various conversations that need to be had with the individuals and we want to make sure that they’re completely supported,” he told Information Morning Cape Breton.
“Once this information is released then they’ll go through another stage of grief because it will be out in the public. And so we’re trying to be very sensitive to the people that have been evacuated and sensitive to the people that have lost or damaged property.”
Wildfire forces more Nova Scotians to flee their homes
Enslow said he doesn’t expect there to be any more evacuations, but noted that fires are “completely unpredictable.”
“We really didn’t forecast Sunday to happen the way that it did. So it just shows the importance of being diligent,” he said.
He said they are assisting people in any way they can, including navigating their insurance claims. They’re also waiting for more information on exactly how the province’s financial aid will roll out to those affected.
But Enslow stressed that in order to be eligible for the financial aid, residents must register with the Canadian Red Cross. People can do that by visiting the reception centre at the NSCC in Middleton or by visiting the municipality’s website and following the links.
Natural Resources said in a social media post Wednesday morning that crews are focused on the east side of Paradise Lake and are also working around the entire perimeter of the fire.
There are six helicopters and six planes in the sky, including bird dogs, which serve as an aerial co-ordination centre. On the ground, there are 36 Natural Resources firefighters, 62 from Ontario and 59 from local departments, plus heavy equipment operators.
