More 'boots on ground' arriving to fight Labrador City fire, says duty officer

Six days after the evacuation order forLabrador City, the province's fire duty officer says crews are turning a corner on fighting the wildfire.

George Gibbons said Thursday's plan is to transition from what he called theinitial attack to a sustained attack, which will mean more "boots on the ground."

In addition, he said, they've gotten a boost to their resources with the arrival of 20 firefighters from New Brunswick and another 48 firefighters from Newfoundland. He also expects recent rainfall will help them in the work ahead.

"Mother Nature is on our side this morning," Gibbons told CBC News on Thursday morning.

Over the past few days, he said, staff have been preparingfor the ground attack by establishing landing pads to bring in firefighters by helicopter.

"Hopefully our crews can get on the ground and really have an impact on that fire."

To put out the fire, he said, firefighters have to tackle the 14,000 hectares in a co-ordinated fashion.

"We've got it blocked out in one-kilometre blocks and each block, you've got to go through each one and make sure that the fire is put out in each block," said Gibbons.

"Which is where the ground crews are going to come in they have to make sure every hot spot there is put out."

According to the provincial government's online fire dashboard, as of Thursdaymorning there were 12 fires in Labrador, the same as the previous day.

Stop using drones, says mayor

Labrador City Mayor Belinda Adams said some residents who stayed behind despite the evacuation order are complicating work being done by officials by flying drones near the fire.

"It has to stop. Drone usage has to stop," Adams told CBC News. "If you're in the fire zone, it's illegal. It's not the time to be tourist-y and posting pictures of where you are and say, 'Hey, look there's no fire.' That's a risk for people to believe, thinking that it's OK but it's not OK."

Still, Adams said she's pleased overall with the work being done to control the fire.

"We're doing pretty good considering the events of the evacuation and the declaration of the state of emergency," she said.

Adams was glad to see rainfall on Thursday morning, she said, but she's concerned about lightning startingmore fires.

"We're looking forward to the rain and those ground crews that will hopefully put us in a better position in the next few days," said Adams.

Wabush post office opening

In a video on Facebook, Wabush Mayor Ron Barron said Wednesday evening that he's heard encouraging news about developments in fighting the fire.

"They feel very confident with all the work that's going on, happening over the next few days, they'll hopefully get a good handle on this, provided Mother Nature works with us. So hopefully she's going to send us a lot of rain."

He said he didn't know if Wednesday's helicopters surpassed the number of buckets of water stopped on the fire, which he said was a record of 199 on Tuesday.

"I hope they beat the record every day."

Barron said Canada Post plans to open a post office in Wabush on Thursday so people will be able to get their mail.

"Just a caution, there's only one person going to be managing this post office. So there doesn't need to be a mad rush down to the post office to get your mail. It's not going anywhere."

Health care in Happy Valley-Goose Bay

Dr. Greg Manning, senior medical director for the Labrador-Grenfell zone, said evacuees arriving Friday night and Saturday morning in Happy Valley-Goose Bay briefly caused a "huge strain" on the hospital. The number of in-patients doubled in just a few hours, he said, but has since subsided.

"Right now we're sort of the normal operating capacity for that facility," said Manning.

"We haven't changed any of the normal operations within Labrador Health Centre, and we are seeing a little bit of uptick in our emergency services demand."

Manning said they have redirected additional health-care professionals to the community and aregetting help from staff members who were evacuated from Labrador City.

"It is more of a normal operations right now, albeit with, you know, our usual strain on capacity that has sort of been present in our health-care system for some time."

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