Crews fighting forest fire 30km from Yellowknife

Fire crews have been deployed to fight a forest fire burning about 30 kilometres northwest of Yellowknife.

The fire flared up earlier this week and is now 2,000 hectares.

Adrian Lizotte, North Slave Regional Duty Officer for the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, says an incident management team from New Brunswick is determining how to tackle the fire.

"They've got 20 firefighters from Saskatchewan assigned to work that fire," he said. "There's limited action to contain that fire from the south, southeast and little bit of the east line to stop the spread toward Yellowknife and some other areas of concern in that area."

A three-person crew is flying out to Prelude Lake because there's been reports of smoke there. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources has not confirmed whether there is a fire burning north of the lake and Lizotte says it may just be smoke. 

Department of Transportation officials say N.W.T. Highway 3 between Behchoko and Fort Providence will remain closed overnight and the situation will be reassessed Saturday morning at 8 a.m.

The Northwest Territories Power Corporation says the transmission line connecting Yellowknife to the Snare hydro facility is functioning normally again, but crews still can't get close enough to know if fires earlier this week damaged equipment. 

Behchoko continues to run on diesel power. The corporation says power crews flew over a section of transmission line near that community and the lines appeared fine, but fire may have charred some of the transmission towers.​