A public information session was held on Tuesday night by the BC Wildfire Service to give Sparwood residents an overview of the work going on to combat the Cumming Creek blaze.
BC Wildfire Service technician Scott Rennick said the terrain is too difficult to get ground crews into the area.
While some people may say just hit it with air crews, Rennick said that doesn’t work.
“Air power never puts out fires. In my career I’ve never seen it,” he added.
“It has to be backed up by ground crews, but I can’t put in ground crews here at this point in time.”
“With the rolling debris and these trees, what happens a lot of times is we start bucketing on them and the debris starts rolling downhill creating more fires on the downhill side.”
If smoke conditions allow, helicopter bucketing may be able to occur on the northern flank of the fire, which will provide some cooling effects to the fire behaviour.
The fire is approximately 52 hectares.
The full recording of the information session can be found below.
MORE: Sparwood Information Session (BC Wildfire Service and District of Sparwood)