Hello everyone,
I thought I should share some pictures with you from a forest fire in Redstone, west of Williams Lake, BC. Last Wednesday, a small fire across from my work site started in the afternoon and before long, due to strong winds, it grew into a decent size forest fire.
Smoke hanging over the trees west of Alexis Creek, BC.
We had a pretty nice view of the hillside going up in flames from my job site. I couldn’t believe how quickly the fire was spreading and growing in size. We were the first ones to help battle the blaze, but with only one small pump we had little chance of succeeding to stop the blaze. All it took was one more gust of wind and a few more trees would be going up in flames.
The sun is obscured by the heavy smoke.
Fire spreading from one tree to the next.
However, the fire fighters did a good job and within the hour, the sky looked like a hornet’s nest as several bombers, helicopters and spotters were battling the fire from above. They continued to drop their loads until late in the evening, by which time they managed to get a pretty good handle on the fire. Crews are still on site making sure that no new hot spots ignite with the dry and hot weather we are experiencing.
A ghostly image as burnt skeletons emerge through the smoke.
A bomber just above the treeline after dropping another load.
Apparently, so far this year in BC we have had 71 fires, of which 70 were caused by man-kind. The cause of this fire is yet unknown but predicted to be unrelated to a natural cause as well. Never having been this close to a forest fire before, I was amazed by the intensity, heat and speed at which the fire spread.
Let’s see what the remainder of this year will bring in terms of fires. There sure is a lot of dead and dry wood out there due to all the beetle-infected timber.
I hope you enjoyed these news photos.
Cheers. Florian