A small wildfire in Lynn Canyon was quickly knocked down after some detective work from a nearby resident.
At around 11 p.m. Monday, Mathew Bond – a former councillor in the District of North Vancouver – smelled and saw heavy smoke at his apartment in the Seylynn neighbourhood.
When he got home just half an hour earlier, the area was relatively clear. “So I immediately thought something's going on, and I wanted to find out what it was,” he said.
Bond hopped on his e-bike and started riding toward where he sensed the fire was coming from. As he approached Lynn Canyon, he came across a crew also searching for the fire. Bond kept riding up the trail and eventually got off his bike where the Sea to Sky Trail got steeper. About a kilometre up the trail, he found the fire nearby and immediately called 911.
Bond described the fire as being roughly 40 feet by 100 feet in size, right at the top of a very steep embankment.
“I could hear the roots of trees burning and smouldering, and cracking rocks and debris falling off and splashing into the water below,” he said. “It wasn't a lot of big open flames.”
“The fire wasn't going up into the canopy but there was a lot of smoke,” Bond said, adding that there were a lot of small spot fires on the ground and several trees were burning from the inside.
“It was super dark and actually kind of surreal, hiking up a trail I know quite well but with a flashlight in the middle of the night,” he continued. “Coming upon this glow, and the wind was coming down the canyon quite strong at the time, so the wind was blowing up and all the smoke and embers were coming up the canyon.”
Firefighters run 2,500 feet of hose to fight Lynn Canyon wildfire
Firefighters from District of North Vancouver Fire and Rescue services arrived alongside crew members from Metro Vancouver to the site around 1 a.m. Tuesday.
The fire was mostly on the ground with some open flame, said DNVFRS Assistant Fire Chief Scott Ferguson, adding that the blaze was climbing a cliff and likely started lower down.
Crews started getting water on the fire at around 3 a.m.
“We use the creek as a water source in that type of situation, because of course there's no fire hydrants in the forest,” Ferguson said. “So we had to run 2,500 feet of hose and connect to a pump that was at Inter River Park.”
Working through the night and into the next day, eventually some crew members were suspended down the cliffside to put out fires there when it was safe to do so. By noon on Tuesday, the fire was declared out, Ferguson said.
Nothing was immediately obvious to suggest a human cause, he added, but no weather events such as lightning had happened in the area recently to his knowledge. Investigators moved in after much of the firefighting work was completed.
“There was falling debris during the entire time we were there, whether it was rocks or trees. So we did not put any staff down at the bottom of the cliff. That's kind of a lost opportunity for investigative purposes,” Ferguson said, adding that safety of the crew takes priority.
Firefighters will continue to monitor the area, which has been closed to the public.
Due to the fire, the Sea to Sky trail is closed between Inter River Park and the Baden Powell Trail south of Twin Falls bridge, according to North Vancouver District.
