Wildfire evacuation order west of Sudbury, Ont., expands, highway closed

Forest fire situation eases in the north After some difficult days, the number of wildfires in the region is declining, but the province that could change with dry weather ahead.

A wildfire west of Sudbury, Ont., has quadrupled in size prompting evacuation orders to be expanded and one highway to close.

More than 57 kilometres of Highway 810 are closed between Highway 553 and Ritchie Falls as forest fire Sudbury 17 reached 4,211 hectares (ha) in size Wednesday evening.

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The fire that started Sunday is located north of Madaweson Lake --between the highway and Mississagi Provincial Park -- and is still not under control. It is about 55 km north of the community of Massey, which is about 96 km west of Greater Sudbury.

Wednesday evening, the evacuation area was expanded to the townships of Olinyk, Plourde (south half), Prescott, Redden (west half), Strain, Teasdale, Poncet, Lehman, Lockeyer, Gerow and Gaiashik.

"Specifically, all travel and use of Highway 553 (also known as the Massey Tote Rd) south of Cameron Creek at UTM Zone 17 E 408201 N 5136071, as outlined on the attached Implementation Order map within the EAO," the Ministry of Natural Resources Forestry said.

"All travel and use of Pecors Rd at the Joubin, Gaiashik Township boundary at UTM Zone 17 E 389417 N 5136617, as outlined on the attached Implementation Order map within the EAO. All persons are prohibited from entering the area indicated on the attached map unless authorized by a travel permit issued by the MNRF."

Derrick Luetchford is the person to contact with questions about the evacuation notice. Luetchford can be reached by email at [e-mail] or [phone] by phone.

This is in addition to the Highway 810 area north of the 17-mile crossover and south of Ritchie Falls.

The travel use and access restrictions in that area have also expanded east of Highway 810.

FIRE STATISTICS

In the last 24 hours, there have been seven new wildfires in northern Ontario – two in the northeast and five in the northwest.

One fire of note is Kirkland Lake 5, which is located eight km north of Lady Evelyn Smoothwater and 10 km south of Highway 65, started around 3:20 p.m. Wednesday and grew to 500 ha in just a few hours.

As of Thursday morning, there are 56 active wildfires in northern Ontario – 34 in the northeast and 22 in the northwest. Of those, 27 are not under control.

Four of the largest forest fires in the northeast -- Wawa 3, Cochrane 6 and 7 and Timmins 7 -- have not grown in size, but are not yet under control.

Chapleau 3 more than doubled Wednesday to 1,531 ha and Sudbury 10 more than tripled Wednesday to 403 ha.

As of Wednesday, there have been a total of 189 wildfires in the region since April 12 and 133 have been extinguished. A total of 42,041 ha have been burned as a result.

CTVNewsNorthernOntario.ca will continue to have daily and breaking news updates as the forest fire situation continues.

Update for Friday, June 9, 2023.