'Could be smoky, smoky summer,' says Wood Buffalo National Park official

Wildfires burning out of control in northern Alberta have forced communityevacuations and cut off road and rail routes between the Northwest Territories and Alberta.

A fire in nearby Wood Buffalo National Park has been burning with similar ferocity, but without the same threat to large communities or other infrastructureseen in northern Alberta. But that doesn't mean park officials aren't keeping a close tab on it, or its potential to grow.

"We saw very aggressive growth in the last two days, including some 10-kilometre runs," said Jonathan Large, the wildfire incident commander in Wood Buffalo National Park. "We've had mostly easterly winds, so that's pushed the fire to the west."

According to Parks Canada, the fire danger rating for the park is very high. As of May 29, there were four fires burning, with the largest being the almost 55,000-hectare fire named 19WB003. It's burning northeast of the small community of Peace Point, Alta. The fire is rated as "being managed," according to Parks Canada.

Stable weather Thursday has prevented fires from growing much, Large said.

"The winds have slackened a little bit, and the winds have been one of the driving factors behind this and many of the other fires in the region."

Large said Peace Point is an "area of concern," but the fire hasn't further advanced on the community over the past 24 hours.

He said there's an incident management team in the park to help manage the fire, but for now the focus is on setting up sprinklers and other ground work to protect cabins, and critical park infrastructure like radio equipment.

'Planning for the long haul'

Large said the fire season so far has been "almost unprecedented" in terms of its early start.

"We would expect to see this kind of fire behaviour and this kind of fire growth in mid-to-late June, and then we'd only have a few weeks left of our traditional fire season," he said.

Large said the aggressive start to the wildfire season in late May suggests one thing: "It's probably gonna persist on the landscape for a number of weeks unless we do see a major rain event, which we're just not seeing in the weather forecast yet."

Large said one thing not seen so far this season are many lightning strikes, but lightning activity is forecast to pick up in the coming days.

"We are planning for the long haul on this one," Large said. "It could be a smoky, smoky summer up here."