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{Photo Credit: Premier Brad Wall} Premier Brad Wall visited the evacuation centres in Regina, Saskatoon and Prince Albert about two weeks ago

While rain brings hope, provincial firefighters, volunteers, and military personnel are continuing to battle the blaze in northern Saskatchewan.

As of Tuesday, there are 125 fires still burning in the province, and the one to three millimeters of rain that La Ronge and Montreal Lake received yesterday have done little to help.

Premier Brad Wall visited some of the evacuation centers in Prince Albert, Saskatoon and Regina about two weeks ago, and he says it's hard to say when things will turn around.

"They want to go home, and who could blame them, but we've got to make sure that that happens when and only when it is safe to do so. We have a very rigorous checklist that we begin to work on with community leaders, and we've managed to go through a few of those checklists in communities and have all of the boxes marked, and so there are some folks going home to their communities. Other than those with sensitive health issues, Pinehouse is one of those communities," he said.

Of the 1500 fire personnel currently fighting to control the blaze, 550 are members of the armed forces and 116 are out-of-province wildlife personnel, as part of a contingency plan. Within 48 hours after Premier Wall put in a call to Prime Minister Harper, troops were on the ground with more than 600 involved in firefighting alone.

"The ones that we're fighting are the ones that would threaten communities, infrastructure, or property that we're working hard to protect on behalf of the people and it's hard to predict but I just think the rain is particularly helpful," said Wall. "It hasn't really been falling much, although it's been raining most of the day - I've been in contact with the Mayor of La Ronge, but in that particular area they have not received the rain they have in other places. Between moisture, cooler temperatures, and additional resources, I think people should know that things are still very serious, but stable and in parts improving," Wall said.

{Photo Credit: Government of Saskatchewan} Battling the blaze up north - photo posted six days ago

The unprecedented fires are burning up more than thirty times the typical fire season, and have caused the provincial government to exceed the budget allotted for events such as wild fires and flooding, as Wall explains.

"This is not the first time it's happened simply because you don't budget for the historical events that we're seeing. This is the largest fire not just in terms of acreage, but also in terms of fires threatening communities and so that means we have to fight them earnestly to protect people and property, and so that's meant the budget has been fully utilized. This happened last year with major flood events, but here's the good news: last year, even after a lot of money spent to deal with the flooding, we managed to balance the budget and we're going to work hard to do the same thing, even though we're through the fire suppression budget right now," he said.

This morning, the Red Cross and Social Services will be moving evacuees at the Regina Evraz Place evacuation centre to Saskatoon. The province is closing the Regina centre because of declining evacuee numbers, and about 200 evacuees will be cared for at the Saskatoon evacuation centres until the evacuation orders are lifted.

Meanwhile, provincial officials are warning evacuees to ignore rumours, noting that word about an evacuation order being lifted for Montreal Lake is incorrect.

There are currently 10,398 evacuees receiving social services due to the fires.