Northerners help to contain wildfire near Killarney

A group of friends doing work on a camp in MacGregor Bay helped contain what could have been a devastating fire in Killarney Provincial Park.

Last Friday, they were working away on the island when they noticed a glow on the horizon, as an empty cottage had caught fire and the blaze was at risk of spreading quickly.

Scott Beaumont and friends were at his camp doing work on the property, when they were turning in for the night. They could see a glow on the horizon and quickly determined it was a fire.

"We called 911 and that was our first instinct, but it was the middle of the night and it's a remote area, so we weren't really going to get an immediate fire response so we called everyone we knew in the area," said Beaumont.

He wondered if they were going to have to evacuate the area if the fire spread. They were processing what was starting to happen and opted to investigate after they got a text asking for help.

They took a boat across the channel in pitch-black darkness where they found his neighbour working away on the affected island with a pump.

"We could see quite a blaze on the peninsula of the island," he said.

"My neighbour had a portable fire pump, there were trees burning, root fires everywhere, and it had just jumped to Baie Fine on the mainland and was at risk of moving up to Killarney Park."

Beaumont says they dismantled the pump and took it to the mainland side of the island, repositioning it to extinguish the fire to try and keep it from spreading further.

Their focus then returned to the cabin.

"We knew no one was coming at that point, so it was up to us, everyone we knew was sleeping and it was just poor timing that way, we would have had a lot more help otherwise," he said.

They worked throughout the night with three pumps to try and put out the blaze and quickly created a perimeter around the property. Beaumont himself found a pump in a nearby boat house that was full of acorns and holes.

"At this point, we're starting to make progress on containment. We realized this was going to be a marathon so we sat there with three hoses pulling from the lake, and extinguished the fire over the course of six hours. My pump had been leaking on me for about four hours and felt hypothermic at that point because I was just soaked," he said.

"We were able to get it at the point where we could see just embers and propped the pumps against the rocks so they'd fire on the building."

The Ministry of Natural Resources and Birch Island Fire Department arrived later in the day to assess the scene.

Beaumont said, "If we hadn't arrived when we did, this fire would have burned for seven hours before anyone would have seen it, it really could have done some damage," he said. "You know you do what you think is right and we're just grateful that we were able to make a difference there and protect the area."

Once it spread to the mainland, the fire was named Sudbury 12 by the Ministry of Natural Resources.

"There was a structure fire on an island, as a result of windy conditions it created a spot fire on the main land," said fire information officer Isabelle Chenard.

"That fire on the mainland was deemed out that afternoon."

Chenard said the fire on the mainland was contained to a tenth of a hectare, but during windy conditions, embers can travel upwards of 2 kilometres.

"It's really important to be mindful of the fire hazard and windy conditions if there are any fires around because it can spread to that much of a distance," she said.

There is no word yet on what could have caused the fire that burned down the initial camp involved with Sudbury 12.