'Unfortunate perfect firestorm' in Shelburne County continues to grow
CBC
If the power or data on your device is low, get your wildfire updates on CBC Lite. It's our low-bandwidth, text-only website.
The historic fire that has been burning out of control for nearly a week near Barrington Lake in Nova Scotia's southwestern region grew yet again overnight Thursday.
Department of Natural Resources spokesperson Dave Rockwood, who is based at the command post in Shelburne County, told the CBC Friday morning the fire is now estimated at 21,515 hectares.
Rockwood said firefighters are doing the best they can given the conditions.
"You feel helpless because when these fires get up to these big raging fires, there really isn't anything that can stop and slow them down," he said. "It doesn't matter if we have 11, 12 aircraft on site, you might be able to steer the fire, but you are not stopping it.…
"Our pilots were reporting regularly, they just couldn't get into the areas we needed them because of the smoke conditions and because of the fire intensity."
Forests are particularly vulnerable to fire this time of year, during what Rockwood called the "spring dip."
"All the water that is in the air or in the ground, it's forced down to the roots of the trees that are in that final push to flush out that winter sap and get the leaves to grow, and that's the most volatile the woods is, at that point."
The month of May was also very dry in the area, with less than 10 millimetres reported in Shelburne since May 2.
"So, it's all linking in to make this unfortunate perfect firestorm," Rockwood said.
Darrell Locke, the fire chief of the Shelburne Volunteer Fire Department, said firefighting crews are doing their utmost to save people's homes.
"We've gotten pushed out of situations for safety reasons that we've had to basically quickly unhook the hose from our trucks and run for our lives," he said. "The past couple of days have been very hard physically. They've been draining on everybody emotionally. It's just been a roller-coaster up and down."
Locke has been in the firefighting business for 48 years. He says he's never seen anything like the fires in Shelburne County.
"This is nothing anybody down this way has seen before," he said. "This is nothing Nova Scotia has seen before.… It looks horrible in lots of places. Folks have lost everything."