Smoke appeared to have drifted into downtown Vancouver by early Monday morning, causing a heavy, acrid smell in the air.
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Traffic on Highway 17, also called the South Fraser Perimeter Road, in Delta is being diverted to Highway 99 and Highway 91 and several businesses in the Tilbury Industrial Area are still under an evacuation order.
At around 4:15 p.m., local police announced all access to the Tilbury industrial park was closed, and that the area of Tilbury within the boundary of 76 Street to Webster Road, and River Road to Progress Way, was being evacuated.
The Corporation of Delta has asked people to remain away from the area. “So it’s a very major concern in that regard”, said Delta Mayor Lois Jackson.
Metro Vancouver says it is monitoring the situation closely but at the moment it is not going to issue an air quality advisory.
The last time a major fire broke out at Burns Bog was in 2005, and that fire was determined to be human caused.
Located southeast of Vancouver, the 30-square-kilometre nature reserve is one of North America’s largest peat bogs, and fire can get under the dry peat where it will burn out of sight.
One Delta firefighter was sent to hospitalized due to a medical condition exacerbated by the environment at the scene of the fire.
“Delta Fire is on scene handing it & assessing size”, the department posted, adding no roads had been closed and no evacuations were in place. “Obviously it’s a very tricky fire to fight”, Jackson said.
It was first reported as a small brush fire measuring roughly 100 square feet, but hot and gusting winds soon whipped the blaze into a much bigger threat.
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The current prediction is that it will be at least a week before the fire is fully extinguished. “They were shifting on us and it was quite a dynamic fire”.
