A new wildfire discovered near Boston Bar, B.C., on Tuesday more than quadrupled in size overnight.
Logged at 10 square kilometres (1,000 hectares) Tuesday night, the B.C. Wildfire Service (BCWS) estimated the fire had grown to 43.3 sq. km (4,332 ha) as of Wednesday morning.
The wildfire service said the Anderson Creek fire started beside Highway 1, just south of Boston Bar, and “spread rapidly upslope.”
“Aggressive fire behaviour (fast-moving crown fire) continued into the night,” BCWS said in a response update.
The Anderson Creek fire joins a wildfire complex already burning in the area, on either side of the Fraser River. The Brunswick Creek and Ainslie Creek wildfires together spanned an area that grew to about 234 square kilometres (23,438.3 hectares) as of Wednesday, according to BCWS.
All three are considered “wildfires of note.”
Morgan Blois, BCWS information officer, said the Anderson Creek fire is estimated to be anywhere from 500 to 800 metres away from structures in Boston Bar.
She said the wildfire’s movement upslope has created a lot of energy, which increased the fire behaviour on the Brunswick Creek wildfire.
The service said crews anticipate “another challenging day” Wednesday due to hot and very dry conditions.
Blois said the service is expecting “fairly extreme vigorous fire behaviour.”
BCWS said fire behaviour and steep terrain on the Brunswick Creek wildfire made direct attack unsafe for ground crews on Tuesday. Tactics are being “reassessed” while structure crews engage in structure defence.
“Even light winds will increase fire activity and change fire behaviour rapidly, particularly in unburnt areas within the perimeter and where challenging terrain has limited suppression options,” said the BCWS.
All three fires are suspected to be human-caused, which is how any wildfire not sparked by lightning is categorized.
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Remaining Boston Bar residents ordered to ‘leave now’ due to new, fast-moving fire
The Fraser Valley Regional District (FVRD), which had previously issued an evacuation order for Boston Bar, sent an urgent alert Tuesday ordering any residents remaining in the community to leave immediately.
District board chair Patricia Ross said the fire is “pretty frightening.”
“There are still people that are refusing to leave. They absolutely must leave,” she said.
“This moves so fast, it’s nothing to fool around with.”
She said it has been too unsafe to get more updates regarding structure loss, and noted the firefight has been very difficult.
Prior to the Anderson Creek wildfire, Ross said there were about 450 properties in the regional district affected by the evacuation orders and alerts but she noted that not all the properties had homes on them.
Highway 1 is closed in both directions between Anderson River Mainline and Jackass Summit for 41.2 kilometres due to the wildfires, according to DriveBC.
Highway 5 should be used as an alternate route, DriveBC said.
Two more wildfires are considered “of note” by the BCWS near Kimberley in southeast B.C.
The Tower Creek 2 wildfire was burning at 2.5 sq. km. (250 hectares) and the Matthew Creek was burning an area of 5.67 sq. km. (567 hectares) earlier Wednesday.
The wildfire service said fire activity was subdued overnight on both wildfires but it expects fire activity to pick up in the afternoon on Wednesday during the warmest and driest part of the day.
The City of Kimberley and Regional District of East Kootenay have issued evacuation alerts due to the wildfires.
There are about 89 wildfires burning across B.C. as of Wednesday afternoon.
