Wildfire near Armstrong, B.C., now being held

The Hullcar Mountain wildfire is seen in this screenshot of a video posted by the BC Wildfire Service on Monday, Aug. 12.

After a week of firefighting, the Hullcar Mountain wildfire, located on a hillside 13 kilometres northwest of Armstrong, B.C., is no longer out of control.

The fire was started by a lightning strike the evening of Aug. 4, and grew to 100 hectares in one day. The fire ultimately burned just over 700 hectares before being reclassified as “being held” on Monday.

The fire’s “wildfire of note” status was also removed as its threat to public safety has lessened.

“This means that based on fuel and weather conditions with the assigned resources, this wildfire is not expected to grow beyond the current fire perimeter,” the BC Wildfire Service wrote in an update on its website.

On Sunday, an evacuation order covering 60 properties in the Township of Spallumcheen was downgraded to an alert, and some properties on alert in the Columbia Shuswap Regional District and Okanagan Indian Band were given the all-clear.

“Until this fire is classified as out, residents can expect to see intermittent smoke over the coming weeks as the fire finds pockets of unburnt fuel from within the perimeter at high elevation,” the BCWS wrote. “These areas are well within the fire perimeter and surrounded by previously burnt fuels.”

In a video update Monday, incident commander Vincent Lyons said the fire is in the mop-up stage now, largely thanks to a planned ignition that took place Saturday afternoon, which brought the fire perimeter to established control lines.

“My goal from the start has been to reduce or remove the evacuation orders and alerts to get people back into their homes,” he said. “Completing this planned ignition allowed us to change the status of the fire to being held and accelerated the timeline for reducing evac orders and alerts.”

Due to its position on a very steep slope, “this is a particularly difficult fire for the crews on the ground,” he added.

Lyons thanked local, contract and international fire crews who helped out, as well as the local contractors and equipment operators who assisted with containing the fire. “Without them it could have been a very different outcome,” he said.