MD of Greenview Reeve Tyler Olsen says nearly every corner of the municipality is being touched by the current wildfire situation. Olsen, along with Regional Fire Chief Wayne Brown, and RCMP Sergeant Chris Power provided residents with an update on the fires Wednesday morning. One of the main points highlighted during the update is at the time of the meeting the fires were showing little to no growth.
“The good news, if there is any good news from this, is we have had a lull,” Brown says.
Brown explains that most of the fires in the MD have Forestry in charge as they are happening in the Forest Protection Area, with MD and local resources helping out where needed including protecting structures. He says he continues to be in contact with ATCO Energy representatives as they evaluate the situation, having as recently as just before Wednesday’s meeting been on the phone with them discussing the possibility of reducing the evacuation zone for the Little Puskwaskau fire and getting electricity back on in these areas. Brown says he is still expecting to get information regarding natural gas connections.
Sergeant Power explains the RCMP’s primary focus to start was ensuring residents were evacuated safely followed by setting up a perimeter, including roadblocks, around the affected areas to restrict access. Now he says some of these roadblocks are being transferred over to local municipalities to take care of, so officers can focus on conducting local patrols, along with also responding to non-fire related calls. To date he says there have been no significant reports of looting in the evacuation zones, adding there have only been a couple of reports of suspicious people in the area.
“We are here for the long haul and are well supported from the provincial level,” Power says. “Being part of a national agency we benefit from being able to access resources and some of those specialize in situations like this.”
During the Update session, Olsen says the fire guards around the Sturgeon Lake fire are 60 per cent complete, while the Fox Creek fire is sitting around 52 kilometres in length. As well officials are keeping an eye on the Grizzly Complex fires as they could affect communities in the MD.
“We are working with Forestry to find a re-entry timeline, it is in progress,” Olsen says. “The last thing we want to do is re-evacuate because we let residents back in too early.”
“Weather helped over the last couple of days. We are hoping to see some evacuations lifted, but it will be dependent on the weather over the weekend.”
Until Friday morning, MD evacuees whose questions were not answered during the Update Session can send them in an email to [email protected] with officials saying the questions and answers will be compiled into a post which will be posted on the Emergency Operations webpage with other fire updates.