Yukon 'dodging a bullet' when it comes to a major forest fire, says expert
Mike Rudyk | CBC News | Posted: July 14, 2016 1:32 PM | Last Updated: July 14, 2016
Bad fire year will happen if fuel, weather and ignition factors combine
An Alberta professor says Yukon's year for a major forest fire will come.
Mike Flannigan, a professor with the Department of Renewable Resources at the University of Alberta and the director of the Western Partnership for Wildland Fire, says Yukon currently has the three ingredients for a major forest fire: fuel, ignition and weather.
"You have lots of fuel except for those 2004 fires," he said.
"Some of the landscape may be still not available to burn but it will be soon. Ignition — some years you have lots of lightning, some years you don't — and then the weather. When that upper ridge parks over the Yukon for seven to 10 days, then fire is fair game.
"The Yukon has been dodging a bullet."
Flannigan said communities should be fire-smarting to reduce the fire risk and give firefighters a better chance of putting wildfires out.