The 2020 forest fire season has officially come to an end.
The Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry is reporting 607 fires across the province this year with 15,460 hectares of land burned.
Information Officer Jonathan Scott says last year there were 537 fires but 269,635 hectares of land burned.
Scott notes the 10-year average for Ontario is 870 fires of 162,799 hectares.
Here in northwestern Ontario we saw 366 fires burning a total of 13,791 hectares of land.
Scott says that included Red Lake Fire 49.
“Red Lake 49 began on August 10 under high to extreme fire behaviour and grew to a size of 552 hectares and of course we dispatched an incident management team to manage that fire along with multiple crews, heavy equipment, water bombers and helicopters.
Scott says the fire forced the evacuation of the entire community of Red Lake.
He notes residents returned home on August 16 after the area received significant rainfall.
The government increased annual base funding for emergency forest firefighting by $30.2-million this year.
Ontario also deployed more than 150 fire personnel to help in the fight against wild fires in Australia, Quebec and Oregon.
That included several from northwestern Ontario who were sent to Oregon to oversee fire suppression efforts.
