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The Chuckegg Creek continues to burn. It has scorched over 330.000 hectares. Photo supplied by Alberta Agriculture and Forestry.
Wildfires

Local firefighters helping out up north

Jul 13, 2019 | 7:00 AM

Some firefighters from the City and County of Grande Prairie are still helping out with the big fire up north.

The city department currently has two firefighters and some equipment deployed in High Level.

Deputy Chief of Operations Trevor Grant says the fire danger is still very high to extreme in the High Level area. As well, the way the fire perimeter is moving, homes in that area still at risk.

“When our crews are up there, they’ve been working on setting sprinklers, maintaining sprinkler protection on homes around the area where the fire could progress into those residences. As well, they’ve been working on doing some hot-spotting, so along the fire perimeter, they’ve actually been going and putting out any hot spots that are close to the perimeter’s edge that they can reach with their equipment.”

Grant says the equipment and firefighters also went north in May when the Chuckegg Creek fire first started. He adds the firefighters usually go there when they are scheduled to have time off here. They change on a four-day rotational basis.

County of Grande Prairie Fire Chief Dan Verdun says as of Thursday morning, his department had four firefighters plus some equipment deployed to La Crete. They are working on structural protection.

“What we’ve been doing is looking at and triaging areas of high risk, in some cases providing sprinkler systems. We have a very sophisticated sprinkler system that allows us to perform water breaks should fire intercede or get into the area then the sprinklers provide some water protection in those areas that can mitigate or potentially mitigate some of the issues.”

Both departments say this will have no impact on fire protection around here.