Yukon Wildland Fire Management issued another evacuation alert Tuesday, this time for the Sixtymile area outside of Dawson City near the Alaska border.

On Tuesday afternoon, it also changed the status of the Takhini Bridge fire west of Whitehorse to “under control” and started to reassign some of the crews working on the blaze.

According to fire information officer Mike Fancie, no known homes are in the Sixtymile area, but there are several placer mining sites in the affected zone.

Evacuation alerts do not order people to leave, but are aimed at ensuring they are aware of the fire and have plans and supplies ready should they need to leave.

The alert includes areas accessed by the Sixtymile Road and the Matson Creek Road.

The Top of the World Highway, which leads into Alaska, is not included in the evacuation alert.

Meanwhile, crews were successful in putting out the two small Rabbit Creek fires near Dawson City and wrapping up some more containment work at the Takhini Bridge fire.

Wildland Fire are beginning to scale back operations at Takhini Bridge after fire crews successfully completed a 150-metre (500-foot) incursion into the fire around the entire perimeter. This substantially decreases the possibility of fire spread.

“We’re feeling really good about how things sit there right now,” Fancie said. “We don’t think the fire is going to spread.”

No cause has been released for the fire that began the evening of July 8 and triggered a now-cancelled evacuation alert for 155 property owners.

Fancie said Wildland Fire can now focus their attention on new fires that have sprung up in the north-central part of the territory during the past week.

Yukon Protective Services have reported that last weekend, there were more than 28,000 lightning strikes in the territory. They identified 16 new fires associated with these strikes.

“There is a lot of lightning right now and a forecast that shows a lot more lightning,” Fancie said.

Most of these fires are in wilderness areas, and fire crews are letting them burn as part of natural ecological processes.

Overall, there are 38 fires currently burning in the Yukon, with three getting a modified response that involves structure protection and monitoring, two getting full firefighting efforts and the rest just being monitored.

The two fires that are getting a full response currently are the Takhini Bridge fire and the Williamson Lake fire, both of which are under control, according to Fancie.

Evacuation Alerts

There are now three active evacuation alerts in the territory.

The East McQuesten fire in the Mayo area continues to burn near some mining operations, though it has not grown since the alert was issued on Monday and was actually re-sized down to 2,465 hectares on Tuesday.

Fancie said there was a helicopter in the air at the fire site Tuesday focused on going around to priority sites and installing structure protection equipment like hoses and sprinklers.

The Reverse Creek fire near the Silver Trail between Stewart Crossing and Mayo still has an evacuation alert in place, but has not moved any closer to 
the highway.

It continues to be monitored by Wildland Fire and the reported size remains unchanged at 3,690 hectares.

The fire forcing the Sixtymile evacuation alert is now being called the Mt. Nolan fire and was listed on Tuesday at 27 hectares.

On Monday, Wildland Fire had deployed air tankers to contain the fire, but it escaped these initial containment efforts.

Fire crews are now working to identify nearby structures and mining operations to decide if structure protection equipment is necessary.