Wildfire jumps Churchill river, forcing essential hydro workers to evacuate

all right back now to our top story this morning essential workers at the church Hill Falls Generating Station have been forced to leave after the Wildfire threatening that town jumped the Church Hill River joining us now to discuss the impact is Eddie Shear he’s in St John’s Forest this morning Eddie what more can you tell us the the fire really ramped up in intensity yesterday afternoon and uh you know the the province and the premier were extremely concerned you know even going back to yesterday morning at the fire and may jump the river and it didn’t Doo that yesterday now circling back this is a fire that started June 12th or 13th from a couple of lightning strikes and it’s pretty well been smoldering and burning to the south of the trans laborador Highway south of the airport and until recently did not pose a direct threat to Churchill Falls or the airport or the Generating Station but yesterday as the winds ramped up from the south temperature were very warm humidity was low the fire grew explosively crossed the river and made its way to the airport and also jumped the airport last night and I believe the fly has slowed down somewhat and is now at the small Reservoir which which basically is a is a body of water that sits north of the airport and the airport sits a good distance away from the town of Churchill Falls so even though the airport has been affected by the fire the town from what I understand uh might be doing okay now I haven’t gotten official reports of that but I haven’t seen uh or heard of any other other reports of the fire actually making it into the town at least to this point so Eddie what’s the impact of employees having to leave the Generating Station how critical are the coming hours I mean so what you have to understand about Churchill Falls it’s it’s basically a work town so everybody that lives in Churchill Falls works for newth Landon Labrador Hydro and so for the town to be evacuated because of the fire that means a lot of the employees that work for NL Hydra there were also evacuated and some were were basically Left Behind to keep the Generating Station running but then obviously to yesterday they were evacuated by a plane and helicopter from the Church Hill Falls Airport due to safety concerns of the fire um yesterday a couple of transmission lines uh transmission lines did trip which Supply Western sections of Labrador with power Labrador City in wush and uh NL Hydro had to work with uh Hydra Quebec to get some power restored to portions of Labrador West because those lines have tripped and they can’t access the plant to restore power from Churchill Falls so that is probably one of the biggest impacts right now as parts of lab West are without power although some is coming in from fermont Quebec and also there are some industrial areas some some industrial um some commercial customers rather in lab West um ioc one of them that comes to mind uh big mine that is currently without power because of the tripping of the lines coming from Churchill Falls Eddie last question what’s the outlook for fighting this fire is the weather cooperating uh the weather is not cooperating right now but it should start to cooperate once we get through midday as rain will arrive expecting up to 15 millimeters of rain this afternoon into this evening in the Churchill Falls area uh on top of that temperatures are going to fall after 2 3:00 as a cold front comes through and the wind direction will change to Northerly and the combination of those things should really help quell the fire I don’t know if it will put it out but it will at least help calm it down a little bit so hopefully fire suppression efforts can get back up and running to keep the uh the town and the airport uh safe safe as they can from the fire and also the wind direction is changing from southernly to Northerly which will essentially push the fire back on itself so the fuel the fire will have to burn uh is going to be considerably less which is some very good news and on top of that we are looking at more significant rainfall in the forecast for the weekend and next week so some good news uh obviously would’ like a lot of rain that’s not going to happen so I don’t know what the uh what the fire behavior is going to be like once we get through today or tomorrow but uh the weather will start to cooperate a little more over the next 24 to 48 hours okay Eddie Shear Eddie thank you for that update really appreciate it

Essential hydro workers in central Labrador were forced to evacuate after the wildfire jumped over the Churchill River. Eddie Sheerr reports

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