The BC Wildfire Service remains on site at the Naver Creek wildfire north of Hixon, 53 kilometres south of Prince George.
The fire is still listed as out of control, and is 70 hectares in size, but did receive 3 millimetres of rain overnight which helped reduce fire behaviour.
“Crews did remain on sight overnight, along with heavy equipment and structural firefighters to work on fire suppression.” said Fire Information Officer, Karley Desrosiers.
“There was no significant growth overnight, and we’re not anticipating any notable growth today (Saturday) as well.”
Desrosiers added the biggest challenge today is the fire burning slash piles, which will likely create more smoke visible to Hixon residents and motorists along Highway 97.
They aren’t anticipating any impacts to Highway 97 or structures today and later on.
Desrosiers said the weather is more favourable today, as temperatures have cooled down significantly, though they’re keeping an eye on a cold front, which brings some erratic and unpredictable winds.
“We’re also in a period of very dry conditions so, not a lot of moisture in the air, we have humidity levels at around 10 per cent and not likely going to have very good overnight recoveries, so that humidity isn’t going to increase dramatically.”
“With cooler temperatures, that will certainly help to limit the increase in fire activity.”
She said progress has been really good since the fire was first detected, but work is still needed to be done.
As of today, there are 20 BC Wildfire Service Crew members on site, with helicopter support and heavy equipment.
Desrosiers noted it’s been a busy 24 to 48 hours in the Prince George Fire Centre, with a number of new fire starts attributed to human activity.
She reminds everyone when recreating outdoors, to keep vehicles with hot exhausts away from long dry grass, avoid having a campfire in windy conditions, and recommends staying away from open burning until the unstable and unpredictable winds subsides.
The Evacuation Order and Alert story can be found here.
The original Hixon wildfire story can be found here.
A map of the current wildfires in BC can be found here.
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