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VanJam Fire Zone, 14 fires RDBN

Accurate mapping difficult
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The Incident Management Team (IMT) in the VanJam fire zone has supporting crews working on 14 fires.

The Shovel Lake and Island Lake fires are burning within this zone but are being managed by a dedicated incident management team based at Fort Fraser - the Fraser Complex 71W19GC, not VanJam.

To date the burnt area is over 27,500 ha. This does not include the Shovel and Island Lake fires.

Many of the VanJam fires were caused by a weather event that included dry lightning storms throughout a wide area.

Smoke from the fires is affecting a number of communities including Vanderhoof, Fort St. James and Titetown.

Highway 27 has been heavily affected by smoke and motorists should drive to the conditions.

August 20, road crews were stopping traffic to warn drivers of low visibility in the area.

Due to the amount of smoke, use of aircraft can be problematic. It makes accurate mapping of the entire fire

perimeter difficult and may show large increases in fire size when new fire information is published.

This is not necessarily a reflection of the fire growth over a 12-hour period but attributed to the time delay in being able to fly over to map the fires.