Delta Burns Bog fire 50% contained
Evacuation order for businesses to be lifted by Monday night but Highway 17 to remain closed until Friday
The Burns Bog fire in Delta, B.C., is about 50 per cent contained, fire officials said Monday in a late Monday afternoon news conference..
"We've made significant progress," said Delta Fire Chief Dan Copeland. "We've focused on the north flank of the fire."
Copeland said firefighters expect to make "significant" progress on the 78-hectare fire by the end of the day.
He said 90 firefighters from a number of jurisdictions were battling the fire, but he expected it would take a full week before the fire is fully extinguished.
Aerial footage from Jul 3: <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BCWildfire?src=hash">#BCWildfire</a> Service assisting <a href="https://twitter.com/CorpDelta">@CorpDelta</a> fire dept with <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BurnsBogFire?src=hash">#BurnsBogFire</a>. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/DeltaBC?src=hash">#DeltaBC</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/YVR?src=hash">#YVR</a> <a href="https://t.co/vr2dk4bk7s">pic.twitter.com/vr2dk4bk7s</a>
—@BCGovFireInfoDelta Police Chief Neil Dubord said the city will lift an evacuation order on businesses in the Tilbury Industrial Area on Progress Way by 8 p.m. PT on Monday.
However, he said Highway 17, also known as the South Fraser Perimeter Road, is expected to remain closed from Highway 99 to the Highway 91 connector until Friday.
Dubord said the closure is to facilitate access for firefighters and to ensure the safety of drivers who have limited visibility because of smoke from the fire.
Delta Mayor Lois Jackson said fears that the fire would sink under the dry peat did not materliaze thanks in large part ot the fast response. She also said the water mound in the bog is high.
Jackson assured farmers fire retardant had not spread to nearby crops or agricultural lands.
She said there is still no call for an air quality advisory
Officials say they're still investigating the cause of the fire.
Bog expected to regenerate
Earlier on Monday, Eliza Olson, the founder of the Burns Bog Conservation Society said about 90 per cent of the peat bog south of Vancouver is expected to regenerate in the coming years, but it could take a century before the entire area recovers from the fire tearing through it.
Olson said the 30-square-kilometre nature reserve in Delta is believed to be the largest undeveloped urban wilderness area in North America.
"That's one of the beauties of having Burns Bog here in the water table," she said in an interview Monday.
"Because it's at the mouth of the Fraser River, it's an estuary-raised bog. You normally don't find a raised bog this far south."
Olson said the bog's acidic, peat-forming ecosystem includes rare plants, such as cloudberries, called bakeapples in Newfoundland and Labrador, and velvet-leafed blueberries, along with two species of dragon flies among its diverse inspect species.
Most of Burns Bog is closed off to the public due to safety and conservation concerns, but about 60 hectares of an area called the Delta Nature Reserve is open and is often a site for school field trips.
Previous fire in 2005
The wildfire broke out just before noon on Sunday and quickly grew to over 50 hectares, despite the efforts of more than 100 firefighters from around the region and several air tankers.
One firefighter was taken to hospital over the weekend, but officials said it was for medical reasons not specifically related to the fire.
In 2005, a fire in Burns Bog grew to more than two square kilometres and took more than a week to put out.
With files from The Canadian Press