Firefighters who battled a fire in hog fuel piles and a dump site at Harmac Pacific’s pulp mill on the weekend brought the blaze under control, but the site could could continue smouldering for some time.
Multiple fire departments were called upon to tackle the fire that broke out in the mill’s bark mulch hog fuel piles in Cedar shortly before 5 p.m. Saturday. Along with Harmac’s on-site fire department, Nanaimo Fire Rescue deployed 11 fire apparatuses that included fire engines, wildland fire trucks and water tenders to the fire, which spread to an old dump site and threatened a large forested area to the southeast.
High temperatures and strong winds drove the piles, which produce heat as the material decomposes, to spontaneously combust. The ensuing blaze produced heavy smoke and ash fallout that the winds carried across Cedar, Boat Harbour and Yellow Point.
Stu Kenning, Nanaimo Fire Rescue assistant chief of operations, said Monday, July 15, that the city’s firefighters were packing up and cleaning equipment deployed over the weekend, but the fire is still burning.
“The fire is not extinguished and we’re thinking it’s not going to be extinguished for quite some time, just because it started in the hog fuel and then blew across the road into the old dump site that was there,” Kenning said. “So, it’s basically burning on top of the abandoned dump site and because of the unknown of what’s buried there it’s really hard to extinguish.”
He said the fire will likely keep burning unless there’s a significant change in the weather.
“Harmac [fire department] is on site right now … It’s contained to their property and contained to the dump site and we’re still on site doing safety patrols and wetting down the exterior to make sure of that.”
Kenning said support from Nanaimo Fire Rescue would continue overnight Monday.
Measures are being taken to have a sprinkler system set up at the dump site to help keep the site soaked down and help prevent future fire breakouts. Sprinklers already installed at the hog fuel piles helped firefighters bring that portion of the fire under control within six to eight hours.
“But then it moved over from there and sort of separated across the road to the old abandoned dump. That’s where the stubborn fire was and it took a long time to move the sprinklers and get water to where we needed it,” Kenning said. “They’re pretty well set up to protect the hog fuel piles, but just because of the wind direction and the spark – ember cast, we call it – it got into the old abandoned dump site and that’s what took some time.”
No structures were involved.
“The initial fear was that it would blow into North Cedar’s area, but we did get there quick enough and we were able to contain it to the site … but that was the initial thought was that, hey, if we don’t stop it here it’s going to get into the trees and possibly get towards homes,” Kenning said.
A helicopter from B.C. Wildfire Service was called in to bucket water onto the fire.
No injuries were reported from the incident, but two ambulances were called in on standby.
“We had a lot of people there and we wanted to make sure we had our resources covered,” Kenning said. “The biggest threat on those fires is heat exhaustion or heat stroke.”
The assistant chief thanked the other fire departments form Cranberry, North Cedar, East Wellington and Lantzville that were called upon to help battle the fire.
“It’s not often that Nanaimo has to reach out to all our partner agencies for support,” he said. “The reason we did that is they’re great at moving water around, so they came in with their trucks that are purposely built to shuttle water and they did a great job and we thank them very much for their support.”
