Watson Lake fire killed forestry budget

By JOHN CRUMP   Staff Reporter

The cost of fighting a major fire that threatened Watson Lake last month is estimated at $880,000, considerably more than the budget the Yukon Forestry Service has to take it from.

Keith Kepke, the forestry service head, said his budget for casual equipment and fire fighters - the suppression budget - is only $500,000 and the department will probably have to go to the Treasury Board in Ottawa for more money.

The total firefighting budget of $4.6 million mostly goes to aircraft and regular fire crew contract - the pre-suppression budget.

Kepke said he wanted to stress that fact that the $880,000 figure is only an estimate. He said not all the bills are in yet from the companies that sold the firefighting team - which at one point consisted of over 150 men - supplies and services.

The forestry service brought in 125 professional firefighters from Alaska, but Kepke said he doesn't have a separate cost for their contribution.

Regular contract fire crews - hired under the pre-suppression budget - are normally brought from other areas of the Yukon to fight a big fire. But in this case so much of the Yukon was suffering extreme fire hazards, crews had to be left spread out around the territory to catch new fires before they became a problem.

Kepke said there shouldn't be any problem getting the additional funding from Ottawa.

Meanwhile, Kepke said, "we are trying to get much more efficient on the other fires. We are cost conscious here because it (the extra costs) is felt throughout the program."

For instance, he said, although the 14,000-hectare fire near Watson Lake continues to burn, no effort is being made to put it out. It will be allowed to burn out by itself. Instead, the remaining crews will try to keep it inside the fire lines. There have been a couple of small flare-ups, he said, but they have been extinguished.

The Watson Lake fire came at a bad time of year, then there is little rain and conditions were becoming dryer. Another problem is that it burned an area of thick bush and heavy timber. He said the fire could burn for a long time, fed by blankets of moss and travelling underground.

Kepke said firefighters always hope for rain - a great cost-saver.

"From a cost point of view, you hope that kind of fire comes late in the season so it will snow on it," he said.

The bad news for the firefighting budget comes at a time when 43 fires, including a major one near Stewart Crossing and another about 10 kilometres north on the Dempster Highway, continue to burn.

Kepke said it will be September at least before he has a more precise idea of the fire costs for this season.