Local wildfires smaller than previously estimated, teams still assigned
The two wildfires burning the North Okanagan and Shuswap have new size estimates.
The B.C. Wildfire Service listed the Sitkum Creek wildfire, located near Sugar Lake northeast of Lumby and Cherryville, as being 1,261.9 hectares in size as of Friday, August 2. The Mara Mountain wildfire east of Sicamous was also listed as 281.4 hectares.
Those sizes were down from the previous estimates of 1,993 and 290 hectares, respectively.
“When we’ve got either ground crews or air resources that are trying to do a track of a fire, we’ve got a helicopter that’s doing that track and if the visibility isn’t great or it’s quite smoky, it can blur that anticipated perimeter of the fire,” Olive Norris-Leite, a fire information officer with the B.C. Wildfire Service, told Vernon Matters.