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July 18: Gustafsen fire 45 per cent contained

Lac la Hache, Watson Lake and Horse Lake back open
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A bomber skims Horse Lake earlier this week. Ray Krueger photo.

8:15 p.m. update: The Gustafsen fire is 45 per cent contained according to Fire Information Officer Heather Rice.

“They’re making good progress on pushing in all the guard lines and I mean there’s still some active fire within the fire perimeter but they’re doing a great job with continuing to secure all those lines,” says Rice.

The closures of Lac la Hache, Watson Lake and Horse Lake have also been removed according to Rice, who had said last night they were looking for hot spots.

“It went well, that’s part of the whole mopping up process… The hoseline is now surrounding the entire fire. They call it having the hose laid around the whole fire. So that means that any hot spots they find they can get at right away because the hose is right there and with the shovels and the hoses get right at them,” says Rice, adding that that’s what they’re working on this evening as well.

Rice says that a good portion of the fire is at the mop up stage. There are now 251 firefighters, eight helicopters, 11 pieces of heavy equipment, 22 support staff and 16 structural fire department resources working on the fire. This is a slight reduction from earlier, which Rice says is both an indication of the progress that’s been made and the needs elsewhere around the province.

“It’s a very busy time out there. There are lots of other fires, so a lot of equipment is kinda being moved around as priorities change and resources are needed elsewhere.”

Original story: Conditions on the Gustafsen fire to the north west of 100 Mile House remain largely unchanged.

“The Gustafsen fire remains stable. It hasn’t grown significantly for quite some time. We’re feeling fairly confident — as long as we don’t have any significant wind event or some other sort of something that could blow the fire up,” says Heather Rice, Fire Information Officer for the Gustafsen fire.

“We are feeling pretty confident we can continue to move forward with mop up at this time and the forecast is boding well too. With these cooler temperatures and rain in the forecast I believe coming on Thursday [it] will certainly help. It won’t put the fire out, but it will certainly help with the mop up efforts.”

The fire remains at 5,700 hectares with 35 per cent containment, says Rice.

“It hasn’t increased in size substantially for actually quite some time. The only difference in hectares over the last number of days has simply been some controlled burns.”

Resources on the fire now include 251 fire fighters, eight helicopters, 11 pieces of equipment, 16 structural fire department resources and and a 22 person support staff team including the incident management team.

Related: Officials working out logistics for return to South Cariboo

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July 17 Gustafsen fire perimeter.