The Takhini Bridge wildfire received approximately three millimetres of rain Wednesday afternoon and evening, preventing any significant growth.

As of this afternooon, the fire size remained at 1,402 hectares.

“While rain will reduce fire intensity, it won’t extinguish a fire,” Yukon Wildland Fire Management said Wednesday evening.

“The forecast calls for hot and dry weather to resume, which will quickly dry out forest fuels and could mean a return to challenging fire conditions.”

Officials added this afternoon the dampness “will create an opportunity for crews to work in areas closer to the fire. Heat and smoke are still visible.”

Wednesday’s reduced intensity allowed for additional work to be completed on guards around the fire’s edge, including hand ignition to remove forest fuels between the bulldozer guard and the fire.

The north guard is fully completed along Ibex ridge, and there is now a ’dozer guard on 75 per cent of the fire, which began last Saturday evening.

Officially, it remains out of control and continues to receive a full response, including the following resources:

• 30 firefighters, including a 17-person Yukon First Nations Wildfire unit crew;

• an incident management team;

• a volunteer fire SHOT crew;

• seven pieces of heavy equipment; and

• four helicopters.

The volunteer fire department continued to provide structure protection support to nearby homeowners, including sprinklers mounted on roofs.

Parts of the Ibex Valley, affecting about 155 properties as far east as Echo Valley Road, remain under evacuation alert today.

Today’s forecast calls for southwest winds around 10 km/h.

“Goals for ground crews and heavy equipment will include taking advantage of the weather window to extend ’dozer guard east and burn off more vegetation between ’dozer guard and the fire perimeter with driptorches,” Wildland Fire said.

The Alaska Highway remains open for public use. If you are travelling in the area, avoid stopping on the highway or any side roads near the blaze so firefighters can safely travel through the area.

Though there has been much social media speculation about the cause of the fire – which broke out in the absence of any regional lightning strikes – no cause has been officially released, though an investigator with the territorial fire marshal’s office visited the site last Sunday.

Visit https://wildfires.service.yukon.ca to see the locations, size and control status of all Yukon wildfires.

Those blazes include a major one in the Silver Trail area of central Yukon, which is being monitored but not actively fought.