The enclosed is a statement from the Department of Fisheries, Forestry, and Agriculture on the ongoing efforts to fight the Kingston wildfire.
We are aware of concerns and comments from the people of the Bay de Verde Peninsula with respect to our ongoing efforts to fight the very aggressive wildfire impacting the area.
As this fire continues to grow and burn, and residents wonder about the safety of their homes and communities, we understand the fear, worry and uncertainty that you all feel.
In an effort to help people understand the conditions we are battling with this fire, we wish to share with you the continuous, ongoing hard work and planning that our incident management team and our crews, both in the air and on the ground, are taking day in and day out to try and stop the spread of this wildfire.
Every evening we meet to discuss what we experienced and did that day. This helps inform our plan of attack for the following morning.
By 7:00 a.m. we have crews in the air flying surveillance to help us determine what happened overnight. We take this information, combined with the advice of our fire behaviour specialists, and make our plan for today.
Unfortunately, when fighting major wildfires Mother Nature can disrupt the best laid plans.
The plan for today was to place a water bomber and the newly-arrived heavy capacity helicopter on the Kingston wildfire, and three water bombers on the Paddy’s Pond fire. This would allow us to thoroughly wet and foam down the head of the Paddy’s Pond fire in the morning, and then transfer all of the water bomber assets to Kingston wildfire in the afternoon for the peak burn period.
However, low visibility due to cloud cover and smoke prevented aircraft from working either fire early in the morning.  This meant the Paddy’s Pond fire had time to flare up and threaten Conception Bay South, and the aircraft on the Kingston Fire were limited to areas away from the head of the fire near Northern Bay.
This evening two water bombers and the high-capacity helicopter are working on the Kingston Fire, and two waterbombers are stabilizing the Paddy’s Pond fire.
The plan for tomorrow is a heavy aerial presence on the Kingston Fire. Our operations specialists will be working on that plan this evening.
Today, the following resources have been working on the Kingston fire:
3 water bombers
4 helicopters
the S61 Heavy Capacity Helicopter that arrived in the province yesterday evening
30 ground crew
80 miliary firefighters
the volunteer firefighters from the area who have been right beside the department from the very beginning.
There are many people working on this fire. We want to assure you that we are always making every possible effort to protect your communities.
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2025 08 14
6:30 pm