Key takeaways:
- Paradise Lake fire passes 10k hectares in size.
- Two giant forest fires continue to burn in central Newfoundland.
- The fire around the Bay D’Espoir Highway rose by about 10 percent throughout Monday.
Newfoundland and Labrador’s regional forest fire duty officer expected rain Tuesday as a raging forest fire around Grand Falls-Windsor enlarged by more than 50 percent.
Jeff Motty told the size of the Paradise Lake fire is estimated to be 10,337 hectares, up from 6,614 hectares on Monday.
Even though water bombers were on the set all day Monday, the fire increased in size, as it was dangerous for firefighting teams to tackle the fire directly.
Read more: N.L. government announces state of emergency as forest fires rage
“We got to get the units on that fire shortly,” Motty told CBC Radio Tuesday.
“If we can get a lot of water bomber action on that, what occurs then is we’re able to get on an edge or a plank of that fire’s perimeter, where it’s secure to do so with units, and we can begin putting out hose lines and start containing that blaze,” he said.
“But we’re not quite prepared to do so yet. That fire is so massive that it will take a lot of time to clean up that area.”
Source – CBC News
