we are tracking breaking news on the dangerous wildfires burning near Church Hill Falls in Labrador officials are now evacuating people still in the town after news broke just last hour that one of the fires has jumped the river that was serving as part of a fire break to keep the town safe cbc’s Peter Cowen is in St John’s with the latest uh so Peter what does this development mean here that this fire has jumped the river yeah this River has really acted as a natural fire break to protect the town of Churchill Falls from this fire that’s 1500 hectares in size and unfortunately Mother Nature was not cooperating today uh high temperatures into the high 20s along with low humidity and some winds that are blowing today from the southwest and so that’s fueling the fire and it actually pushed some of those Flames over the river onto the community of chal Falls and because that fire has crossed the river that’s why they are now removing about a 100 or so people that were still in the town in order to keep the hydroelectric plant um that is there up and running this is a very important plant and they just kept sort of a minimal number of people but now that the fire has crossed the river they’ve decided to pull even those essential workers out and the premier said just about an hour and a half or so ago that you know this fire crossing the river is definitely a big concern for him we hoped we prayed that the fire would stay on the correct side of the river um and that the river would act as a natural uh barrier fire barrier fire Break um so very concerning uh but I think it’s uh premature to say how the fire will behave in what is a um what is in a new scenario um with um an incredible amount of fuel in front of it uh on the banks of that River over the last few days they have been doing a number of things to try and protect the community uh they’ve been busy cutting a fire break to try and uh create that uh opportunity to stop the fire before it reaches the community they’ve also been putting up big industrial sprinklers to try and wet the community down to protect it now that power plant uh in the town is important not just in that area for Labrador but also for Quebec and if Peter if if everyone is being evacuated does that mean all of the staff who were left there I know it was a reduced number of Staff who were still operating the plant there um but does that mean they’re leaving as well yeah I was just talking to hydro officials and they said yes everyone is going to go but they are going to sort of do it in phases with the most essential people being the last ones uh to get out of town they’ve been preparing for this uh so they actually shut down um a lot of the operations in the plant they’ve reduced it to sort of the minimal power output that the plant can produce uh which means the power that normally flows to Quebec Quebec’s getting a lot less power and this is a 1960s plant it was not designed to be operated remotely but over the last few days they’ve been doing things to try and set up some remote operations and monitoring uh so that’s what they’re going to do so they will be able to continue to provide Power to uh the communities in Labrador and some power to Quebec but they said today they are working on some backup plans so even if that plant goes offline completely they’re still able to keep the lights on for people in Labrador and Beyond that’s really interesting context there Peter in in terms of the lack of remote capabilities and and also Al interesting just how quickly things can change Peter thanks so much for the latest on this that’s cbc’s Peter Cowan in St John’s
At a news conference Tuesday, Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Andrew Furey said the fire has jumped the Churchill River, but still remains about seven kilometres from the town, as of around 3 p.m. NT. The change in the fire has prompted a full evacuation of Churchill Falls in a phased approach.
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