A fire crew is at the scene of a wildfire in Carbonear on Tuesday evening. (Submitted by Sonia Williams)
A provincial fire crew is on the scene of a small but intense wildfire in Carbonear.
Jeff Motti, the province’s on-duty wildfire officer, told CBC News shortly after 7 p.m. that the fire was first reported late Tuesday afternoon.
The fire is burning behind businesses at the corner of Columbus Drive and Fox Farm Road in the community.
Motti says those businesses — Canadian Tire and Dairy Queen — aren’t an immediate problem, but there are some homes in the area.
“There are houses in the distance that we are trying to protect. We’re doing some structural protection, we’re putting some foam lines in there to protect the forest and protect the homes,” he said.
“We really just want to knock it down and put it out as best we can. We have enough fires on the island right now, we just want to do everything we can to put it out as quickly as possible.”
Motti said the initial report from Carbonear was that the fire had covered about 30 meters by 100 meters of space, or about 0.3 of a hectare.
He said flames could be seen coming out of the treetops, indicating the intensity of the fire.
“This is an example of more extreme fire behavior than, say, a ground fire, so it definitely concerns us,” Moti said.
Two crew members were deployed from Heart’s Desire and a water bomber from Gander flew missions.
“Given its proximity to the city, it could be a human-caused fire. But if they had lightning in the area, it could also be a natural cause fire,” Moti said.
“It’s really too early to tell.”
Bay D’Espoir Highway closed again
Meanwhile, the fire burning near the Bay D’Espoir highway has reignited. The fire started on July 24 and has been burning in the area since then, causing closures and disruption to commuters on the road.
Motti said the fire worsened Tuesday afternoon. So far it has affected over 1000 hectares of land.
“Around 1pm today the behavior of the fire changed at the Bay D’Espoir site and we saw some of the edges light up. The winds also picked up at that location and really fueled the fire,” Moti said.
The highway was closed again Tuesday night, with fire crews heading back to the scene Wednesday morning.
Moti said further evaluation is expected around 8:30 a.m
“We’ve had very hot and dry weather, so any rain we do get doesn’t really wet the ground enough,” he said.
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