Raging fire menaces Pelly, Fort Selkirk

By GERRY WARNER

Pelly Crossing residents were nervously returning to their tiny hamlet today. However, they were ready to evacuate again on a moment's notice as forest wildfires burned to within eight kilometres of the community.

Meanwhile, forest fire crews are worried about increasingly warm temperatures forecast for much of the territory this week.

"It's a watch and wait situation," Doug Caldwell, the territorial Emergency Measures Organization public information officer said at press time today.

"It all depends on the weather, and things can change very quickly," he said. It was severe smoke conditions and not actual fire danger that forced the evacuation of the community of 270 residents late Friday evening.

Rampaging forest fires are burning on three sides of the community. The closest one is the Carmacks 14 (Minto) fire to the south. It merged with the Carmacks 18 fire on the west side of the Yukon River Friday evening into a gigantic, 68,000-hectare conflagration.

A cluster of smaller fires is also burning to the north of Pelly Crossing with Carmacks 23, an 800-hectare blaze crossing the Klondike Highway just to the north of the Pelly Crossing airstrip.

A fire crew of 20 men and 3 bulldozers have dug a guard five blades wide around the community, utilizing some of the old guards from a giant fire in 1969 that threatened the community, Caldwell said. That was also the year the brand-new Faro townsite was destroyed.

EMO, DIAND, and Selkirk First Nation officials are monitoring the situation around the clock. They believe that because much of the forest around the edge of the town was burned in the previous fire, there's not enough fuel left on the ground for the fire to threaten Pelly this time.

"But with a fire of this magnitude, if an ember lands in an optimum spot, anything could happen, so we would like to err on the side of caution," Caldwell said.

Forest fire forecaster Mike Purves has little good news to offer the residents of the fire-threatened town. "The only good news is the winds are dying down, but with low relative humidities and rising temperatures, it's going to get the fires going again."

Light showers hit Pelly over the weekend. However, it's sunny today, with the high Tuesday forecasted to climb to 25°C and relative humidities as low as 25 percent.

At press time, the Klondike Highway was open but subject to closure at any minute.

Also threatened by the raging flames is the restored heritage village of Fort Selkirk on the Yukon River, about 30 kilometres west of Pelly Crossing. Fire has approached to within 14 kilometres of the historic fort, but was holding at Wolverine Creek, said Keith Kepke, the DIAND's fire management head.

So far this season, there have been 108 forest fires in the Yukon, with more than 100,000 hectares touched, twice the normal average. Forty-two fires are currently burning out of control, Kepke said.

Sandy Trerice is the manager of the Selkirk Gas Bar and Grocery in Pelly Crossing. She said today the smoke was so intense early Friday in Pelly that it went completely dark, and people had to drive with their headlights on.

"It was really amazing," she said. "It's not even supposed to get dark this time of year, but it did."

Trerice, who was back stocking the shelves of her store today, said about a quarter of Pelly's residents have returned, with many checking their properties, feeding their animals, and hosing their houses down.

She also said some Pelly residents feel the community wouldn't have been threatened if DIAND forest fire fighters had tried harder to put out the Carmacks 14 (Minto) fire earlier.

"When the fire began, it was fairly small and there's a general feeling around here that they could have put it out if they had bombed it a little longer."

Kepke said he sympathizes with people making complaints, but added that a DIAND air tanker bombed the Carmacks 14 fire with retardant 45 minutes after it was spotted June 12.

"If we could have put it out, we would have put it out," he said. Despite the bombing, the fire was throwing out embers that were starting spot fires a quarter of a mile away from the main blaze by 8 p.m. June 12, and which by 3 a.m. the next day had already grown to 50 hectares in size.

"It was just a losing proposition," he said. It's hard for the general public to comprehend how fast forest fires can grow in the tinder-dry conditions of central Yukon this year, he added.

"When they're ready to go, they go, and you're not going to stop it," he said. A fire of the magnitude of the Carmacks 14 blaze starts to produce its own weather conditions, which firefighters refer to as a "firestorm."

"A firestorm can produce winds like a hurricane or a tornado, but when you get a tornado, I've never heard of anyone asking the government to go and put it out," he said.

Yukon residents should keep in mind that forest fires are natural phenomena of the boreal forest, have been occurring for the past 1,000 years and will continue to occur in the future, he said.

"When they complain, I tell them to spend a little time on the fire lines with a hose in their hand and staring the fire in the face."

Crews have already saved numerous buildings and property, and deserve to be commended for their efforts, he believes.