Fire ban remains in place for St. John’s, Mount Pearl and Paradise
The St. John’s Regional Fire Department is reminding citizens that a fire ban remains in effect for much of metro, including St. John’s, Mount Pearl, and Paradise. The fire ban will be evaluated and updated by Friday.
Over the last two days, some have been asking why SJRFD has a fire ban in place and the Provincial
Department of Fisheries, Forestry, and Agriculture had the Eastern Avalon Fire Hazard Actual Index
map listed as low. As the information on their site indicates, this is a relative rating of how easy it is to ignite forest vegetation and available fuels, how fast a fire may spread, and how difficult a fire may be to control.
Some of the other categories they take into account are human-caused and lightning-caused fires.
For Human-caused they look at 1) how receptive the small, thin forest fuels are to ignition and
spread and 2) how much human activity is happening in or near the forest creating “ignition
sources”.
According to a statement from SJRFD, “we do take the Fire Hazard Forecast into account, but we have a lot of other factors to account for as well. Similar to the human-caused fires, the population density is much greater in our region than in the forest at any given time.