Fire ban in place for much of northwestern Ontario: MNRF

The extreme fire hazards in the central and southern portions of northwestern Ontario haveprompted the province's Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry to declare a fire ban on Thursday.

"The reason to put a restricted fire zone in place is to reduce the amount of unwanted human caused fires," fire information officer Jonathan Scott said."We're dealing with a lot of new starts everyday and we want to ensure we limit the amount of human caused fires."

He said the recent fire starts have predominately been caused by lightning, however due to the extreme fire hazard in the region, crews are wanting to limit any new starts as much as possible this upcoming weekend.

The restricted fire zone includes the Kenora, Fort Frances and Dryden districts, as well as the southern portions of the Red Lake, Sioux Lookout and Thunder Bay districts as well.

The City of Thunder Bay and the surrounding municipalities such as Neebing, Gillies, O'Connor, Oliver Paipoonge, Shuniahand Dorion are not included in the ban, nor are unincorporated areas of Pass Lake and Sleeping Giant Provincial Park.

Nine new fires as of Thursday morning

As of Thursday morning, there was a total of nine forest fires reported in the region, according to Scott.

He said most of them are small as they range from 0.1 hectares to 2 hectares in size and many have already been extinguished.

"Right now there are 66 active fires in the northwest region and out of those, two are classified as not under control," Scott explained.

The nine new fires include three in the Dryden district, three in the Fort Frances district, two in the Nipigon district and one in the Thunder Bay district.

Big fires being monitored

The fire near WabakimiProvincial Park, as well as Kenora Fire 71, are currently being monitored, Scott said, with sprinklers being set up around proprieties near the fire.

"Being monitored means [that] we are observing it andalso assessing the fire on which way its going to spread," Scott said.

He said fires that are being held means crews are suppressing the fire, which is different from fires that are being monitored.