Even if the fight against forest fires continued to progress Wednesday evening in the intensive zone of fires in northwestern Quebec, the Society for the protection of forests against fire (SOPFEU) reported that in the northern zone, several disasters were in progress.
In the most recent update of its operations, SOPFEU described the situation in the northern zone as worrying. Thursday morning, among the 129 fires that were active in Quebec, 88 were listed in the far north of Quebec. Fifteen of them were identified as priorities.
SOPFEU recalled that its mandate in the northern zone is to fight only fires threatening communities or strategic infrastructures. But due to the progression of certain disasters, measures have been taken to protect the access roads to the communities of Eastmain, Wemindji and Waskaganish, the Billy Diamond road, the North road, the Transtaïga and certain installations of Hydro-Québec, in particular those of LG3 and LG4, east of Radisson.
Ground or aerial firefighting operations have been launched, with several fires spiraling out of control.
Due to these operations on the territory and the evolution of weather conditions, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forests (MRNF) announced Thursday morning an expansion of the northern territory affected by the ban on access to the forest on the lands of the domain of the State and by the closure of forest roads.
On the rest of the territory, in the zone called intensive protection, 41 fires were active Thursday morning and SOPFEU considered that the situation had stabilized. No fire was considered out of control and there were only three priority fires left, two on the North Shore and the other in Jamésie. Twelve fires have still not been attacked, but they did not put any community or infrastructure to the test, according to SOPFEU.
The organization said work to control the fires was progressing. Forest firefighters were at work on the edge of the fires and used various fighting techniques, including ground spraying and controlled burning.
Spraying from helicopters and air tankers was also carried out, while the technique of thermovision was used on the fires in order to detect hot spots and extinguish them.