Officials with the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency (SPSA) say the province is in a “much better situation,” as more wildfire evacuees begin to return home.

During an update on Monday afternoon, Steve Roberts, vice president of operations with the SPSA, said Denare Beach and Creighton have allowed their non-medical residents to return over the weekend, with those needing medical supports not able to return.

“At this time, the Public Safety Agency is supporting 46 individuals who have a medical need concern,” he said.

Roberts noted the community of East Trout Lake remains evacuated, but access is being worked on for those residents to return.

As of Monday, there were 19 wildfires active in Saskatchewan with five not contained, Roberts said. So far this year, there have been 267 wildfires in the province, well above the five-year average to date of 162.

As of Friday, the SPSA said 1,931 values have been lost in the wildfires, including 299 houses and 60 cabins. During Monday’s update, Roberts said those numbers have not changed.

“Arizona, Colorado, Washington, South Dakota and the U.S. Forest Service staff continue to work with us on some of these fires, including our own staff, our type two firefighters from our northern communities and our type three firefighters all continue to work on these fires, and taking advantage of the cooler moisture weather,” he said.

“The result — I think we see a much better situation today.”

While the current situation in the province is improving, Roberts said the fire season is only halfway done, which changes their strategy somewhat.

“Now that we have a handle on some of these larger fires, we will be moving some of our staff back into what we call initial attacks … in other words, we get a chance to go and assess it, if it’s small enough at the time, we can go in and actually put it out,” he explained.

“If it’s going to take some more resources, we can then deploy them and stack those in, so that part of our program will get a little heavier as we come out of this wetter area and back into more regular fire patterns and weather patterns.”

Roberts noted that other fires will continue to have rotating staff to make sure they are fully contained.