'Still a lot of heat in the ground,' fire officials tell Whiteshell property owners

More than 200 people crammed into the Whiteshell community club for an information session on a nearly 6,000 hectare fire burning on the Ontario-Manitoba border.

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"Everyone in the room is impacted one way or the other and we understand the concern," said Marney Brown, Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources forestry incident commander for Kenora Fire 018, the name of the blaze.

"We don't want to think the weather's kicking [out] the fire it's not," she said. Officials from both the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Manitoba Natural Resources said conditions are still quite dry. Still, Brown said the fire is 50 per cent contained.

She confirmed there has been no damage to hydro lines so power is still on in the communities.

"The objective of this fire is full containment, we're looking at full extinguishment," said Brown. She told the crowd she expected to be at the session answering questions for a while, the crowd chuckled in response.

One key question is the weather.

"The weather set the whole scenario of this fire and will govern how it goes for the rest of its life," said Bill Laidlaw, a weather technical specialist for the Ontario government. He said May 5 has been the warmest day so far this spring.

"Incredibly warm. New records were set. Amazing temperatures. And we were windy. Lots of wind, rain, hard frost. We're going to have more of this I'm afraid," he said.

Brown said cottage owners should be able to return to their properties midway through next week, depending on conditions over the coming days.

Fire had lots of fuel

Ian Staley, afire behaviour analyst with Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, said conditions before the fires broke out were very susceptible to burning. He said the trees, mostly jack pine, black spruce, birch andpoplar, were leafless and that can mean trouble.

"[They were] all ready to burn, and they did,"he said.

Staley said on the west side of the provincial border, especially in the Caddy Lake area, the jackpine trunks and branches on the ground were tinder-dry and contributed to asignificant source of fuel on the ground. Jack pine has flaky bark that allows fires to travel upwards, he said.

But there's hope, he added.

"There's still a lot of heat in the ground [but]we expect no growth in thefire in the next few days. The weather will allow the crews to get inthere and really pound it and do some good suppression work,"said Staley.