Forest Fires in Canada: 30 June 1999
30 June 1999
Several vegetation fires were detected by OSEI with the NOAA-14 AVHRR HRPT satellite.
Fig.1. Heat signatures and smoke from areas of fire burning in the Northwest Territories north of Great Slave Lake and in Alberta west of Lake
Athabasca.
(Source: http://www.osei.noaa.gov/)
A fire situation map 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.
The town of Badger (New Foundland), with its 1,200 inhabitants, was evacuated Monday evening on the advise of the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police), when a forest fire threatened to engulf the community. The Badger fire, also known as the North Millertown Junction fire, is not the only one burning in central Newfoundland. A second fire is burning near Red Indian Lake it’s believed both fires were started by lightning. The North Millertown Junction blaze, has claimed about 3,500 hectares of forest and is the same fire that closed the Buchans highway on Sunday and Monday when dense smoke obstructed visibility. The winds changed to a southwesterly direction, which pointed the blaze right toward Badger. There are a lot of smaller fires burning in central Newfoundland, but most only have one or two people working on them. The firefighters just try to mop them up and make sure they don’t become a large fire. Fire crews are concentrating their efforts on the Millertown Junction and the Red Indian Lake fires (100 ground firefighters). (John Anderson, thanks for providing the information to GFMC.)
Saskatchewan Daily Forest Fire Situation Report (10:00 AM Tuesday, 29 June, 1999):
There are 16 forest fires burning in the province today.
3 fires have been extinguished in the past 24 hours.
7 new fires have been reported.
Total number of fires to date this year is 300.
Total to date last year was 604, FIVE year average is 347.
The whole report and further information can be accessed at the fire management website of Saskatchewan Environment and Resource Management (SERM).
The CANADIAN DAILY FIRE SITUATION REPORT shows further detailed information regarding the fire situation in Canada, which, however, will not be mentioned here in detail. We refer to the corresponding home page.
Regular updates on the currently ongoing International Crown Fire Modelling Experiment in the Northwest Territories. The experimental site is located 40 km northeast of Fort Providence (61.6° N, 117.2° W). For more information see http://www.nofc.forestry.ca/fire/fmn/nwt/
