Forest Fires in Canada: 19 May 1999
19 May 1999
North of Sault Ste. Marie
Canadian forest fires keep crews busy
(source: http://www.cbcnews.cbc.ca/ WebPosted Mon May 17)
SAULT STE. MARIE – Forest fires across the country are keeping fire fighters busy battling the blaze and some continue to burn uncontrolled despite water bombing.
A huge forest fire, 400 kilometres north of Sault Ste. Marie, has already swept over 350 square km of forest and continues to burn unchecked. It’s just one of 23 forest fires in Ontario now. Authorities say careless people have caused more than 90 per cent of the forest fires in Ontario so far this year. Hot, dry conditions sparked most of the fires and steady winds have fanned the flames. That’s brought some fires dangerously close to residential areas. Emergency crews are using water bombers to try to put them out but more warm weather is in the forecast, raising fears the fires could spread.
There are 28 fires burning across the province of Manitoba and in Quebec, there are between five and 10 small forest fires burning. The forest fire protection agency says several new fires erupted Monday afternoon.
Officials in that province say all the fires are under control. There is a ban on campfires in most places north of the St Lawrence river — officials say the hot dry conditions make it easy for even small fires to quickly get out of control.
Forest fires in New Brunswick caused power outages for about 4,000 customers in the Fredericton area over the weekend as the flames destroyed several power poles.
Crews restored the power overnight but had trouble getting to the damaged area because of the blaze.
A quick overview of the latest (current) fire situation (last update: 17 May) and all previous days can be directly accessed at the Fire Monitoring, Mapping, and Modelling (FireM3) Project website (the FireM3 project is a collaboration of the Canadian Forest Service and the Canada Centre for Remote Sensing). Through the Map Link you can access daily hotspot images. An Internet Map Server, which is like a simple GIS running on the host computer, allows you to zoom in on any fire or other area of interest and view the image and map data at full (1km) resolution. You can also click on any fire and get information about that fire.
