The wildfire complex that caused the evacuations of several northern Alberta communities earlier this month is still burning, but the situation has improved significantly.
After more than a week — and, for residents of Garden River, almost three weeks — members of Little Red River Cree Nation were told by Chief Conroy Sewepagaham they will be going home.
Sewepagaham made an announcement on Monday afternoon in a Facebook video message.
“We had a discussion with regards to re-entry for Garden River, Fox Lake and John D’Or, and we’d like to announce that we gave a directive to the branch management team, and directors and managers for each of our three communities, to prepare for a re-entry,” he said.
“The re-entry is going to be happening soon,” he added.
Sewepagaham said the preparation for re-entry would include making sure that all the necessary infrastructure and utilities are fully operational.
Sewepagaham said the nation’s members would be told the date of the re-entry on Tuesday at about 3 p.m. via another Facebook video update.
‘Good progress’ on wildfires
Melissa Story, an information officer with Alberta Wildfire, said they’d seen “good progress” with firefighting operations in the High Level forest area, where the Semo complex fire that caused the evacuations of Fox Lake, Garden River and John D’Or Prairie is located.
“This weekend, we saw great progress in a lot of the major wildfires that are burning in northern Alberta,” she said during a media availability. She said the Semo complex received between 10 and 30 millimetres of precipitation in specific areas.
“It did get the precipitation. There was lower fire behaviour. We’ve been very successful in our hot spots and reinforcing the containment lines.”
Story said firefighters will focus on fighting the fire near Highway 58. As of Sunday evening, the fire was about two kilometres north of Highway 58.
Mark Giles, another information officer with Alberta Wildfire, said in an interview that the fires are about 19 kilometres from John D’Or Prairie, 15 kilometres from Fox Lake and 13 kilometres from Garden River.
“Those distances have remained stable for a number of days now,” Giles noted.
“There’s a lot of structural protection in place in those communities at this point,” he said.
Giles said it’d take “a lot of work” to bring the fires under control. There are some 420 firefighters and support personnel, 17 helicopters and 70 pieces of heavy equipment working on the Semo wildfire complex.
“It’s going to take a lot of work specifically on continuing to enhance the containment lines and the the fire guard, and obviously working to extinguish hotspots,” he said, as well as the areas of concern along the complex’s southern perimeter, because they want to keep the fires away from the communities.
Some more showers this week
Brian Proctor, a meteorologist with Environment Canada, said in an interview they’re expecting showers in northern Alberta for much of this week, until Friday or Saturday.
The temperature in the High Level area is going to be relatively mild, he said.
“We’re looking for highs of about 20 to 24 for tomorrow, then we sort of hold near 18 to 22 through much of the remainder of the work week.”
On the weekend, the temperature will begin to climb again, he said, to mid-twenties — seasonal conditions for northern Alberta.