Yukon Wildland Fire Management officials are particularly disturbed by a human-caused fire in Tagish over the weekend.

Fire information officer George Maratos said this morning a series of five small bonfires on the Ten Mile Road were left unattended and eventually joined one another.

A passerby reported the fire Sunday afternoon. It was only a matter of minutes before a helicopter was bucketing the site, as the chopper was already in the area because there had been an earlier report of smoke, he explained.

Maratos said these are exactly the situations that firefighters don’t want to see, particularly under the fire danger conditions that are currently high to extreme across the territory, with no end in sight.

“We didn’t see conditions like this at all last year, let alone in May,” he said. “It is supposed to stay hot and dry, and we are supposed to start seeing some lightning today.”

Maratos said he doesn’t know the origin of the bonfires but did note the scene did suggest a large camping party.

There was a total of four new fires over the long weekend, all caused by humans, he said.

As an example of just how dry it is, a fire last night in a farmer’s field two kilometres south of Fox Lake was started by the exhaust from a water pump being used for irrigation, he added.

A joint effort by Wildland Fire Management firefighters and the Hootalinqua Volunteer Fire Department contained the blaze to one hectare, as it was reported quickly, Maratos said.

He said a fire at the south end of Lake Laberge near Burma Road Saturday afternoon was human-caused.

And the first one of the year in the Haines Junction district was started Sunday by a man burning brush, which is against the law when conditions are high to extreme, he said.

Maratos said if they had an extreme-extreme category, the Haines Junction district would be in it.

Meanwhile, the human-caused 37.5-hectare forest fire in the Dawson district near the Dempster Highway cutoff is being contained. (See separate story below.)

Maratos said at the peak of firefighting activity over the weekend, there were 20 firefighters working the blaze with the assistance of three helicopters providing buckets of water from a nearby source.

As of this morning, the fire danger rating was extreme in Whitehorse, Watson Lake, Ross River, Mayo, Haines Junction and Carmacks. It was high in Beaver Creek, Dawson, and Teslin, and low in Old Crow.

Fire Management is asking for extreme caution when attending to a campfire.

Campfires are prohibited inside city limits unless they in an approved fire pit inside a campground.

“With the extreme fire conditions across much of the territory right now, it is a concern when we are seeing this many human-caused fires,” duty officer Lorne Harris said in this morning’s daily fire report.

“It is imperative the public do their part and ensure any fires they light are properly extinguished, especially with lightning in the forecast this week and the potential for new starts.”