Sask. currently dealing with over 80 wildfires, none threatening communities, SPSA says

As the devastating wildfire in Jasper National Park continues to burn, Saskatchewan is currently batting more than 80 active wildfires of its own.

Steve Roberts, vice president, operations at the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency (SPSA) says what started out as a very wet spring and summer in the province has given way to heat and lots of dry lightning activity.

“We are currently dealing with over 80 active wildfires in our province right now, that number has come down somewhat from our peak of over 100. That being said, it will take some time to get all of them contained, extinguished and off the books,” Roberts said in an interview with CTV News on Tuesday.

He added that significant precipitation is needed throughout the province with more heat and dry weather forecasted in the coming days.

Of the 83 active wildfires burning, Roberts says as of July 30 none are threatening any communities. Only one community in the province has been threatened by a wildfire this year to date, that being Creighton, Sask. near Flin Flon, Man. Roberts says that situation is now under control and no evacuation alerts are in place anymore.   

All the fires currently burning are north of Prince Albert, according to SPSA’s active wildfire situation map. However, Roberts says conditions in southern Saskatchewan are also favourable for wildifres, adding that people need to be just as vigilant down south as residents need to be in the north. 

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When it comes to preventing a situation similar to what occurred in Jasper, Roberts knows there are limitations as to what can be done sometimes, but said for them it begins with an extensive public campaign surrounding prevention.

“We also have a mitigation program, working with communities and individuals on making sure that their homes are more fire resistant, less of a risk and making those communities less [of a risk]. So even removing fuels around those communities, modifying the timber types that might be adjacent to a community, putting in some fire breaks,” Roberts said.

“So should a fire encroach on a town we would see that fire behavior drop because of those measures,” he added.

Roberts said that all public emergencies in Saskatchewan are managed by the SPSA, including evacuations.

“We do evacuation preparations with communities and our staff to ensure that they’re ready and understand how to interoperate the information we’re giving them,” Roberts said.

More fires than average

Compared to previous years, Roberts says 80 fires currently burning is considered a fairly high amount.

So far in 2024, there have been 423 wildfires in Saskatchewan. Roberts said normally this time of year, somewhere between 200 and 300 would be expected.

“So we are well over our five year average already and again we still have a little bit of wildfire season left going forward,” he said.

Despite the wet spring, Roberts said it’s not that surprising to see the amount of wildfires Saskatchewan has experienced so far.

“We had a dry winter and we expected this, we brought crews in early to deal with spring fires, so we had an above average amount of spring fires. Then we got the precipitation which literally brought us down to zero [wildfires] at one point in June,” Roberts said.

He added that once the heat and dry weather arrived, they came with some intense storm systems that brought a lot of lightning which sparked some of the wildfires currently burning.

“We were getting between five and 15 new wildfires every single day because of lightning,” Roberts said.

According to Roberts, long term investigations indicate that it is close to a 50/50 split when it comes to human caused and lightning caused wildfires in Saskatchewan.

Here’s a look at all active wildfires in Saskatchewan the SPSA is aware of as of July 30 and current fire bans in effect.