The Chutanli Lake Wildfire is 9,750 hectares in size according to the BC Wildfire Service.
The blaze is burning just south of Vanderhoof and is proving to be difficult to contain.
Fire Information Officer with the VanJam Fire Zone, Matt Reeves says they continue to battle the wind.
“One of our challenges today is that we’re likely to see a little bit of a front come through and with that a change in wind direction to the west-southwest. Our crews have been focusing a lot of attention on the northern or northeastern side of the fire.”
The VanJam Fire Zone is located within the Prince George Fire Centre and deals with blazes within the Vanderhoof area.
The other fire of note is the Purvis Lake blaze east of Takla Lake at 1,450 hectares in size.
Reeves says crews aren’t receiving much of a break from Mother Nature who is playing a nasty game of hardball right now.
“Even with low-winds, we’re seeing that the dryness of the fuel and the terrain is really pushing these fires along so they really are what we would call fuel-driven fires at this point.”
“Crews will again be faced with fairly hot conditions and that means the fuel is super dry and as I mentioned earlier is available for the fire to consume it, we’re expecting these fires to continue over the coming days and we have a lot of work to do before we can say the fires are being held.”
To bolster firefighting efforts, crews have been brought in from around the world to lend a helping hand.
“We do have some crews in from Mexico and of course we have some incident management teams from Australia like myself who have come over and we’re working to assist the locals with the management of these fires.”
Conditions are expected to remain dry for the next 4 to 8 days with little to no rain in the forecast.