A wildfire in a popular park in southern Vancouver Island is now projected to remain within the current perimeter established by the B.C. Wildfire Service (BCWS).
The 2.3-square-kilometre blaze in Sooke Potholes Regional Park, dubbed the Old Man Lake fire, has been classified as “being held” Tuesday.
Located five kilometres south of the Sooke Lake Reservoir, the fire is currently not posing a threat to lives or properties, according to the BCWS.
But several regional parks and trails — such as the Sea to Sea Regional Park, the Sooke Potholes Regional Park and the Spring Salmon Place Campground — remain closed “as a precaution,” the service says.
According to Cliff Chapman, the service’s operations director, the fire remains active and its smoke will still be visible in the area.
The BCWS, however, has “fully contained” the fire’s west flank along the Sooke River, and is continuing to “make good progress” on its north and south flanks. It said Tuesday that “there was no appreciable growth on the fire overnight.”
“We don’t anticipate that fire to go beyond our identified control lines,” Chapman said in an interview with CBC’s All Points West.
Chapman credited the effort of local firefighters, as well as support from some crews originally from Fort St. John, in helping bring the fire under control.
According to the BCWS, there are 70 firefighting personnel and three helicopters assigned to the Old Man Lake fire.
“That crew out of Fort St. John did an amazing job of helping and working with the local crews and the local fire departments that were on scene to really secure the edge of that fire,” he said.
Chapman added that rain over the weekend helped with the firefighting effort, which the BCWS has also seen in other parts of the province.
The Old Man Lake fire is one of 77 blazes being held Tuesday afternoon. They make up just over 20 per cent of the 344 fires that are still burning across the province, with most blazes still listed as “out of control.”
Chapman says he expects more heat to come in August, and he said there’s more work to be done to put the Old Man Lake fire out.
“It’s a lot of hard ground work now that’s left on that fire,” he said. “We’ve got resources on it to do that really difficult work, particularly in some of the terrain of that fire.”