Hectares burned in NWT nearly double over weekend

After another hot weekend across the Northwest Territories, there are now 113 active wildfires and 328,370 hectares burned.

As of Friday evening, there were 90 active fires and 165,306 hectares burned. Over the past three-and-a-half days, the amount of land burned since the start of the fire season has nearly doubled.

Most new fires reported over the weekend are not near communities or infrastructure, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources reported in a tweet.

ENR noted three new lightning-caused fires along the Ingraham Trail in the past day.

One of those fires is still burning approximately 16 km east of Pensive Lake, but remains less than two hectares in size. Since there are cabins in the area, the department stated on its wildfire updates webpage, fighting the fire is a priority.

The other two fires, near Jennejohn Lake and Prelude Lake, were both declared out on Monday after crews and aircraft extinguished them.

In the Dehcho, ENR said firefighters successfully completed a controlled burn on a large fire 40 km south of Wrigley. Crews burned a line east of Highway 1 to limit the fire’s growth and protect the community.

In the South Slave, two Fort Providence Complex fires are still out of control but there is no threat to the community nor infrastructure. 

Farther east, a new cluster of 16 lightning-caused fires was detected by satellite and confirmed by aerial surveillance several hundred kilometres northeast of Fort Smith toward the Nunavut boundary.

In the Sahtu and Beaufort Delta, there are no major updates and no wildfires currently pose a risk to communities, cabins, or other infrastructure.