NDP upset over Beauval wildfire miscalculation from SPSA

The people in Beauval were told they had four days before the wildfire threat in the area would reach their community.

But that turned into four hours, leaving people in a mad dash to evacuate on Thursday.

Leroy Laliberte, NDP MLA for Athabasca said the updates the community received on Thursday were not helpful.

“We were getting these daily updates,” he said. “One of the updates we had was that the SPSA said that the fire wouldn’t hit the community until Monday, which gave us four days, well actually it was four hours.”

Read more:

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Laliberte said once the alarm sounded on the evacuation alert, it got chaotic due to how quickly everything changed.

“People were in scramble mode to get out of the community when the fire hit,” he said. “I’m really thankful that nobody’s been hurt.”

Laliberte said the community tried its best to warn everyone as soon as they were told they had to evacuate.

“The mayor made an announcement on the local radio and said, ‘pack a bag, we need to leave here now,’” he said. “Just a miscommunication directly … is what affected (the people) the most.”

Laliberte said the miscalculation by the SPSA put people in danger, and that more support was needed for the first responders who were on the ground fighting the blaze.

“This is totally unacceptable, we have people’s lives on the line here,” he said. “We have people on the ground that I feel weren’t supported.”

Laliberte also mentioned a water bomber made a drop near the community and left, Laliberte said that could’ve been because the pilot thought he had until Monday before it would get worse.

He also believes the SPSA underestimated the power of this fire which is what led to a costly miscalculation.

“I saw firsthand that those fires were out of control,” Laliberte said. “They (SPSA) said that they knew that they were out of control a long time ago and it was something that they had seen firsthand.”

Nick Daigneault, former mayor of Beauval and leader of the Emergency Operations Committee said it was a scary situation that could have been even worse.

“We had a dire situation (on Thursday) night where the winds blew the fires into our community,” he said. “It was touch and go there for a while.”

The Emergency Operations Committee was also out telling people to leave the community as soon as possible.

“We activated our emergency plan and went door knocking,” he said. “We had a list of who had stayed behind and made sure our citizens were safe.”

Daigneault said there was minimal damage to the community.

“We’re glad to report we lost no households,” he said. “However we did lose one recreational structure although in the grand scheme of things that’s not such a big deal.”

Fires in Saskatchewan on July 13

As of 11:30 a.m. on Sunday, 57 active fires were burning in Saskatchewan on July 13.

SPSA said that 12 of those blazes were not contained, while 23 of the fires were under ongoing assessment and firefighters were protecting values in 18. Four fires were considered contained.

Contained means suppression action is taking place and the fire is not expected to grow in size, ongoing assessment means the fire is being monitored regularly to assess risk to values in the area and not contained means suppression action is taking place but the fire is expected to grow in size, according to SPSA. Protecting values means a fire is active and action is focused on protecting things like cabins and infrastructure.

A fire ban was put in place for northern parts of the province including the area north of the provincial forest boundary, up to the Churchill River.

It restrics open fires, controlled burns and fireworks within the boundary. ATV/UTVs were not included in the ban put in place on July 10.

There are still active bans in 20 urban municipalities, 31 rural municipalities and four provincial parks in the province, with the fire danger considered high to extreme for much of the province.

SPSA says there have been 362 fires in Saskatchewan so far in 2025. The five-year average to date for Saskatchewan wildfires is 211.