A 130-hectare wildfire raged five kilometres east of Donatville last week.
Grassland Fire Department responded to the Donatville fire, which was reported last Tuesday afternoon.
Early estimates by local residents claimed 50 hectares of land were affected. One local resident reported police had erected a roadblock late Tuesday afternoon.
By evening, no one had been evacuated but the fire was “very close to three farm yards,” said the resident. Smoke was thick across farmyards along Range Road 190 late that night. By Wednesday, bulldozers had scraped a gorge around the perimeter to help minimize the risk of the fire spreading.
Athabasca County Public Works was on the scene through the day with fire trucks, a bulldozer and track hoe, along with an additional two contracted bulldozers and water trucks working to contain the fire’s perimeter, according to an Athabasca County news release. Alberta’s Sustainable Resources Development (SRD) was also on scene.
County officials asked members of the public to stay clear of the scene while officials worked to contain the fire. By Thursday, the county was “still urging citizens to stay away from the area to allow crews to do the work required,” according to a separate release.
Ron Jackson, the county’s director of agriculture and protective services, corroborated the suspicion of locals with his own hypothesis that the fire may have been caused by material caught up in the muffler of a quad last weekend.
“Because it started in the middle of an unpopulated, swampy (black spruce) muskeg that was crisscrossed with cut lines of quad trails, I would bet money that it started from a quad,” Jackson said. “Sometime on the weekend it scooped up some (debris) on its muffler. It heats up and it drops off, it sits there and kind of smolders there like a cigarette.”
Jackson believed that when the winds picked up on Tuesday, “it embellishes it more and before you know it, it catches onto some kind of grass, and then it catches at the base of a tree, and it’s gone.”
“There are way more fires started by quads than by any other human activity, but it’s a little challenging to control, because if the fire actually ignites 24-36 hours later, who are you going to point the finger at?”
County communications coordinator Alex Denonville considered the Donatville fire “under control” Saturday morning.
It would, however, be “several days before it is completely extinguished,” and he went on to note that SRD would continue a “mop up” of the scene for at least a week.
A smaller fire near Caslan was also reported, and extinguished by Thursday.
Volunteer firefighters and county crews were called out to a fire near Hope Lake believed to have started late Thursday or early Friday morning, according to Denonville.
A county-wide fire ban continued through the week.
