Courtesy: Cypress County

By Jessie Weisner

FIRE FIGHT CONTINUES

Cypress County bringing in thermal imaging helicopter for Walsh fire

Aug 1, 2019 | 4:55 PM

CYPRESS COUNTY, AB –A state of local emergency remains in place for Cypress County, while they continue to try and extinguish the smouldering areas from the Walsh fire.

Courtesy: Cypress County

A collective 17,000 hectares have burned, along with a garage, pump house, shed, kilometres of fencing and telephone polls.

Courtesy: Cypress County

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The Suffield fire has since been extinguished, with Suffield fire officials patrolling the area for any hot spots or flare ups.

Crews have been on scene at the Walsh fire for 24 hours a day, trying to extinguish hot spots.

Conditions are improving, but with hot, windy weather coming to the area during the long weekend, Cypress County is taking some extra precautions to ensure there’s no more flare-ups.

“They are slowly improving, not to the point that it’s safe right now, there are still problem areas. Crews have been out there, right now if they see a hot spot they extinguish it so right now we won’t know more until we get that high altitude thermal scan,” says Kelly Meyer, Cypress County fire chief.

The County is bringing in a thermal imaging helicopter Friday morning, in order to pinpoint hot spots.

It will be deployed at 4:30 a.m. while it’s still dark out, to identify areas that responders may not be seeing.

Crews from Saskatchewan and Alberta Forestry will then go out and extinguish those areas.

“This fire is in the root system, Forestry has also identified that as well,” says Meyer. “So by just having the ability to pinpoint GPS locations where they are, send resources there, tactically try to extinguish it and hopefully we have no more issues with it.”

With a very hot and windy long weekend, Meyer hopes to have this fire extinguished by Saturday.

“That’s why we’re trying to get the upper hand on it, so we can get this thing in hand and put to bed before the weekend hits,” says Meyer.

The state of local emergency will also be re-evaluated Friday, with an update provided by noon.