The highway between White River and Hornepayne, Ont., has closed again as large wildfires burn in the area.
Wawa fires two and three ignited over the weekend, according to the province, it covers over 100 hectares, and is located six kilometres west of White River.
Wawa 3, meanwhile, has grown to cover 4,700 hectares and is nine kilometres east of White River. Earlier in the day, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry reported Wawa 3 being just 800 hectares in size.
Environment Canada has issued a special air quality statement over the smoke, as well as a heat warning, with temperatures expected to reach 30 C over the next day or so, before rain is in the forecast later on in the week.
Despite the nearby fires, smoke was still minimal in White River Tuesday afternoon, said White River Mayor Tara Anderson Hart.
“It’s pretty clear,” she told CBC News shortly after 5 p.m. Tuesday. “I can see a lot of blue sky. The wind is gusting a bit, which is most likely going to cause some issues with the way the fire goes.”
The fires prompted another closure of Highway 631 between White River and Hornepayne on Tuesday afternoon. It was the second time the highway had closed this week: it was also shut down Monday evening, and re-opened shortly before noon on Tuesday.
It was closed again beginning about 2 p.m. Tuesday. Officials say the latest updates are being posted to Ontario 511 and on the Ontario Provincial Police social media feeds.
Anderson Hart said the closure, and the fires, are causing problems for the area’s mining industry.
“The Silver Lake Mine is up Highway 631,” she said. “They actually evacuated the mine site yesterday because of smoke.”
“By 6:30 p.m. last night I believe they had everybody off site, although this morning they were able to send a small crew back in to do an assessment and get their care and maintenance program up and running.”
Meanwhile travellers in the area are required to take a longer route along Highway 11 due to the closure.
“I know they had to escort a fuel truck through to the Hornepayne community this morning,” Anderson Hart said. “There was zero visibility, so they had police escort on a closed road to ensure that the residents in Hornepayne will have fuel.”
Anderson Hart said there are a “wide variety of reactions” to the situation among White River residents.
“Some people are are very relaxed,” she said. “The MNR [Ministry of Natural Resources] is doing their job. That’s exactly what they do. They’re doing it very well.”
“Other people are a little more panicky, where they’re wondering ‘are we going to be evacuated? What do I do if we are?’ Those kind of things. So we’re answering those questions as they come up.”
Anderson Hart said she’s been assured by the MNR that there will be plenty of warning if an evacuation is required.
Ashley Nickle, community safety and media relations officer for Superior East OPP, said highway closure decisions are made by the OPP and MNR.
“Basically what it comes down to is a safety issue,” she said. “Whether or not motorists and any road users can safely use the road.”
“In this case, the fire is not yet under control and it is producing large amounts of smoke resulting in near-zero visibility. So that’s a concern,” Nickle said. “The second concern is that, at at least one location, at one point the fire was observed to actually jump across the highway.”
“If the fire is jumping back and forth across the highway, that is obviously leading to some extremely dangerous conditions.”
Nickle said anyone travelling through the area should take some precautions.
“If it’s non-urgent travel, if it’s something that can be rescheduled, we do recommend that people reschedule their travel plans,” she said. “We do not know how long it will take to get this fire under control. It may be hours, it may be a matter of days.”
Earlier today, police warned of reduced visibility due to smoke on Highway 17 south of White River, near Depew River.
Highway 17 remains open, with officers on scene monitoring the situation, according to OPP.
As the highway reopens, the two fires in the Wawa District continue to burn.
Both are listed as not under control by Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry.
Kyle Hayward, communications and media relations specialist with the MNR’s Aviation, Forest Fire and Emergency Services section, said Wawa 3 is currently the priority fire of concern in the region.
“It’s currently spreading in the northeast direction, and it’s situated about nine kilometres east of the town of White River,” he said.
“We’ve been consistently dousing it with air aerial support,” Hayward said. “We’ve had two to three crews on the ground at the moment, but primarily through aerial support.”
“We are looking to kind of contain the fire, as well as establish a perimeter around the outside of the fire.”
Joshua Johnson, a forest fire research scientist with Natural Resources Canada, explains to CBC North’s Shannon Scott why forest fires behave the way they do.
Another fire of concern is Chapleau 1, which is being held, but is in “somewhat close proximity to the town of Chapleau,” Hayward said. “We’re paying close attention to that, especially with the extreme hazard for the northeast region today.”
The fire hazard in the northwest region is also extreme in most places, save for a few pockets of high hazard including areas around Thunder Bay, Kenora, and Dryden.