One month later, Stein Lake fire still not considered officially out

One month after a major wildfire began near Saint Andrews, in southwestern New Brunswick, the fire is still not considered to be out by the Department of Natural Resources and Energy Development. 

Despite a rainier-than-usual June, the Stein Lake fire continues to be labelled as "being patrolled" on the province's online list of wildfires. 

"A fire will remain at this stage until firefighters are confident that there are no more hot spots remaining that could cause a threat of the fire expanding outside of its existing boundaries," department spokesperson Nick Brown said in an emailed response to an interview request. 

Ideally, he said, officials would be able to access the entire area and extinguish any hotspots. 

"In the case of the Stein Lake fire, the terrain is so rough that we are making extensive use of our drone to identify and monitor hot spots to make sure they are self-extinguishing with all of the rain we have been getting. Once we are confident there is no more threat of re-ignition, we will call the fire out."

Brown said the department isn't currently concerned about the fire "causing any further issues."

The fire started on May 28 after an all-terrain vehicle caught fire. Pushed by very strong winds, the flames soon spread to nearby trees. It's called the Stein Lake fire because it began on the South Glenelg Road near Stein Lake, approximately 13 kilometres north of Saint Andrews. 

Strong winds continued to carry the flames from hilltop to hilltop. In fact, the fire spread to areas eight kilometres away from the initial fire and jumped Highway 127 in at least three places. At its widest, the fire burned three kilometres across.

By the following day,  there were at least six distinct fires burning. About 250 hectares burned, but only one house was lost.

As is normally the case with wildfires, the Department of Natural Resources took over management of the Stein Lake fire. While the Saint Andrews Fire Department battled to save homes — along with its mutual-aid partners — it was DNR staff who battled the blaze deep in the woods with the help of the province's water bombers. 

In fact, the Saint Andrews Fire Department hasn't been involved since the first week of June "after that really big rain," said fire Chief Kevin Theriault.

He said his department had full crews fighting the fire for the first four days — along with more than a dozen other departments from as far away as Harvey and Oromocto — while DNR's forestry crews remained for an additional four or five days — until significant rain fell. 

Theriault said that rain was the turning point for firefighters. 

"If we hadn't have gotten the rain then there would be definitely crews out there every day patrolling it and watching for new smokes and things like that," he said.

Wetter-than-usual June

The rain started within a few days of the fire and continued for much of the last three weeks. In fact, the month of June was much wetter than usual in southern New Brunswick. 

From May 28 to June 28, the Chamcook area received 152 millimetres of rain, said Environment Canada meteorologist Jill Maepea. 

That, she said, is definitely more than the area would usually get. 

Historically, St. Stephen would receive about 90 millimetres in the month of June, said Maepea. 

"So we are definitely seeing about one-and-a-half times as much rain for that region for the month of June."

Flare-ups common

 Theriault said it's not unusual for flare-ups to continue long after a fire seems to have been extinguished. 

"A lot of times these fires will burn fairly deep," said Theriault. 

If they get into a squirrel's underground cache of nuts or other subterranean debris, "they'll hold their heat or smolder for a while," he said.

"So until you get a really good pounding rain to get down into all those [places], sometimes hot spots will still show."

Theriault said that's why DNR is continuing to monitor the area from the sky with the help of a drone equipped with thermal imagining.

He said the fire department still has to do a formal review of the Stein Lake fire response, but he said his initial assessment is that "it went fairly smoothly." 

"Our next steps will be to sit down and do some after-action reviews on it and see what went well, what we can improve on."