With all the recent rain, you may be asking when you can have a campfire again.
The short answer is not yet.
A Restricted Fire Zone (RFZ) was put in place by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry for our region on June 1 and is still in effect.
“Day by day we go with what we’re seeing,” says Evan Lizotte, Fire Information Officer with Aviation, Forest Fire and Emergency Services. “But at this time there’s been no timeline put into the Restricted Fire Zone.”
He says with the rain comes lightning and those lightning strikes can be buried under the forest floor for up to a week.
“What we’re doing is monitoring these areas and ensuring these lightning strikes don’t turn into fires despite all that precipitation,” Lizotte says. “That’s one of the reasons why this RFZ is up so we can limit the number of lightning and human-caused fires at the same time.”
The ministry says no open air burning, including campfires, is allowed within the boundaries of a Restricted Fire Zone.
Municipal fire bans are also in effect.
As of Wednesday morning, there are 66 fires burning in the RFZ.
**Written by Richard Coffin