Officials with Parks Canada gave more insight into the battle against the Buhl Fire, which is now burning inside Prince Albert National Park.

The wildfire is estimated to cover 33,917 hectares – 6,262 hectares of which are within the park’s boundaries. As of Tuesday evening, the fire is 31 kilometres from the townsite of Waskesiu.

On Sunday, a pre-evacuation alert was issued for those inside Prince Albert National Park and the townsite of Waskesiu. Residents are not required to leave the area at this time – but are encouraged to be ready for an evacuation at short notice.

“This is a very difficult decision to make, and yet we feel it’s prudent, just out of caution and abundance of caution for public safety, to alert people that it’s possible that there could be an evacuation alert,” explained Gregg Walker, an incident commander with Parks Canada.

“We want to give people as much time as possible to evacuate should that become necessary and so evacuations are complicated and can take some time and we want to make sure people aren’t under a great deal of duress while doing it.”

According to Walker, the team managing the fire consists of 29 personnel, three helicopters, in addition to other heavy equipment.

The majority of work being carried out is aimed at limiting the fire’s spread southward. Cat lines north and south of the MacLennan River as well as north of Crean Lake are planned. Additionally, more cat lines are planned for Ramsay Bay and Montreal Lake Cree Nation.

While the coming days don’t look especially windy at the moment – Walker says that conditions are not expected to improve either.

There is no distance threshold established for when an evacuation order will be called for communities in the area – like Waskesiu. Those decisions will be dependent on analysis of the fire’s behaviour.

“We are currently planning some thresholds for when we would go to an evacuation alert and when we might move to an evacuation order and those come through analysis of fire behavior and weather and meteorology, through some specialists we have working on that,” he added.