Sask. preparing for potential early start to wildfire season

Saskatchewan saw an unprecedented amount of wildfires last year, and now officials are preparing for another busy season after months of low precipitation.

In its Monday morning meeting, the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency (SPSA) warned that the province may see an earlier than usual start to the wildfire season.

SPSA explained that air and ground crews will be ready to go two weeks earlier than normal in preparation.

“At this time, we are expecting a season that will be average or above average based on conditions,” SPSA President of Operations Steve Roberts explained. “Ultimately the summer weather will determine what that actually results in.”

• Download the CTV News app to get breaking news alerts sent to your device

The agency was sure to highlight that about half of wildfires are started by people. It stressed importance being mindful of fire bans if residents intend to camp through the warmer months.

Saskatchewan’s abnormally dry weather is making it difficult for necessary moisture to be retained, according to Natalie Hasell, warning preparedness meteorologist for Environment and Climate Change Canada.

“Considering how it has been dry in a lot of places, it’s going to be really hard to get lots and lots of precipitation out of the next systems that come through because they won’t be able to feed much from local sources,” she explained.

“If you’re looking for really big amounts of precipitation, normally you have to be in an area that has had a lot of precipitation and as you’ve seen, we don’t have a lot of that in the prairies.”

While it is difficult to predict the behaviour of wildfires – the SPSA does keep tabs on various contributing factors.

“As we go though the next period of time, it will be dependent on not only as I’ve indicated, human caused fire starts, but also how periodically we’ll get rain, cooler conditions, wind events,” Roberts explained.

“So at this point, the weather trends [do not] 100 per cent correlate with fire activity. It is a combination of factors and we will manage those as they occur.”

According to Roberts, ground crews should be ready to respond to fires by next week.

The SPSA has said there are no known wildfires currently burning which might have carried over from 2023.