Fire officials say several grass fires sparked near Thetis Lake Monday afternoon were intentionally lit.
View Royal fire says it was paged out to a grass fire in the Thetis Lake area and upon arrival it received calls about a secondary fire further along the Trans-Canada Highway.
Traffic badly snarled Northbound on TCH by grass fires. Crews still on scene. pic.twitter.com/GbmjpYUpvb
— Robert Buffam (@CTVNewsRob) June 27, 2016
Millstream fire crews and Colwood crews were called in to assist with the brush fires.
“When we came upon this fire we hit the first fire down at the overpass to Thetis Lake and we had large white plumes of smoke with active fire in the ground,” View Royal’s assistant fire chief Rob Marshall told CTV News.
According to Marshall, the biggest challenge was the location because of all the traffic.
“We had all three lanes shut down maybe for about ten minutes during this incident,” Marshall said.
Two lanes were re-opened a short while later.
We are assisting Fire Depts with brush fires along Highway 1 along Langford and View Royal. Highway to be closed NB. Avoid area #yyjtraffic
— West Shore RCMP (@WestshoreRCMP) June 27, 2016
Marshall initially said the fires may have been caused by a discarded cigarette.
“If you’re travelling on the TCH with this nice beautiful weather, please don’t discard cigarette butts, bottles, anything like that,” he added.
View Royal fire later confirmed the fires had been intentionally lit.
“Fire investigators and the RCMP can confirm that we do have reason to believe these were intentionally lit fires. We have found evidence that supports our suspicions and the investigators and RCMP will be investigating that further,” View Royal fire chief Paul Hurst told CTV News.
No one was injured and there was no property damage.
Fire officials are calling on drivers to be vigilant in dry and hot weather conditions.
“We’ve had a real dry spell going on, not extremely hot where it would push us in the high rating, but we’re at the point now where as soon as the heat raises we are into an extreme condition right now and you can see that with this fire,” Marshall said. “Along with heat comes the winds and the winds push and fan these fires and make them worse than they normally are.”
