Crews don't expect 4.5-hectare fire in Dick Hart Park to spread

Photo: Matt Makar

Photo of the fire at Dick Hart Memorial Park north of Kamloops on Saturday.

A wildfire northeast of Kamloops is being held by fire crews, and no further spread is expected.

The 4.5-hectare blaze is located in Dick Hart Memorial Park, 14.5 kilometres northeast of Kamloops.

Gagan Lidhran, fire information officer with the BC Wildfire Service, said there are 15 wildfire service crew members on site Sunday.

“Crews are going to continue looking around the inside, just making sure that there's no real hotspots that can potentially ignite, and then cause the fire to ignite again,” Lidhran said.

“At this point, because of the amount of work that the crews put in yesterday with establishing the hose lay, getting the handguard around the perimeter of the fire, we don't anticipate any further spread.”

The fire was estimated at 3.3 hectares on Saturday evening, growing to 4.5 hectares by Sunday.

Lidhran said much of that growth is attributed to ground crews using small-scale hand ignitions to control the perimeter of the fire.

“There was a trail near the fire, so we were able to do some of those small scale hand ignitions and allow for the fire to naturally lead its way towards the trail,” she said, adding trails are considered to be a natural handguard, as they are typically comprised of bare soil.

Lidhran said the fire isn’t yet officially considered under control, but crews don’t anticipate any further spread beyond the wildfire’s existing boundaries.

“There's still some work to be done to make sure that we maintain the great tactics that our crews were conducting yesterday,” she said.