Prince George, B.C. – The threat of wildfires in northern B.C. has not dissipated much as we enter the weekend with a high to extreme fire danger rating through the majority of the Prince George Fire Centre.

Information Officer Jill Kelsh says relatively good progress is being made on the major fires of note with no significant growth of those blazes in the past few days.

“As far the new fires we have we’ve been making really good progress, a lot of them have been called out or are now on patrol or mop-up.”  She says recent fires have been due to lightning strikes “but we’ve been doing a lot of patrols and been able to get on our fires and get them knocked down before they turn into big fires.”

There are approximately 30 fires currently burning in the fire centre.  As far as the larger ones go Kelsh says “the Red Deer Creek fire was at 80% (contained) and we’ve been doing scans on it and we are almost able to call it one hundred percent contained.  Our Euchiniko Lakes fire we’ve been making really good progress on that one.  We just have a little more to do to call it 100% contained.  The Mt. McAllister fire they’ve been making good progress with their burn operations.  It’s still 25% contained but they’ve been doing really well on it so far.”

Kelsh says help is on its way to this region in terms of firefighting resources.  She says Australian firefighters should be arriving here today or Sunday “and we’re also getting firefighters out of Ontario and Quebec again that will be coming into Prince George.”  Exact numbers are not yet available.