It was one of the worst fires in the history of Whitehorse.

The Whitehorse District Office logged a call from the Haeckle Hill fire tower at 1:24 pm on Thursday, June 20. The tower reported smoke at the base of the Haeckle Hill near the old gun range. In moments, air and ground tankers were at the scene. In 15 minutes the fire, presumably an abandoned camp fire, had consumed two hectares, in another 15 minutes five hectares were gone and by midnight, 1500 hectares within the Whitehorse City limits had been decimated. Whitehorse Forest Fire #32 was getting a reputation.

From his desk at Forestry Resources, fire suppression Duty officer, Al Beaver marshalled the fire fighting crews to be deployed on Whitehorse #32. As the fire grew, Beaver went further afield for resources: he brought tankers planes up from Watson Lake and put out a call for three 20 person special operations crews from rain-soaked southern British Columbia.

By early Friday,there were eight air tankers, two helicopters, six bulldozers, six land tankers, 18 smoke jumpers, and 115 fire fighters at the scene. The strategy was simple: the bulldozers would cut a fire break (cat line) from 3 metres to 6 metres wide around the 20 kilometre circumference of the fire, then the flammables between the fire’s edge and the cat line would be burned off leaving no available fuel to feed the uncontrolled fire.

The strategy worked magnificently. If the fuels on the east flank, just three kilometres from Crestview, had not been successfully burned off, there was every expectation the uncontrolled fire would have continued unimpeded. Instead, the fire lines away from the prevailing winds the east, south, west lines, were declared secured by 2:00 pm Friday. Only the north flank of the fire burned out of control. But out of control it was.

"This was a forest of Black Spruce limbed to the ground," Beaver explained. "It’s the most volatile forest we have. And the weather conditions were simply ideal for fire. Any time you have high temperatures with low relative humidity you can expect action."

Hard work and providence rescued a serious situation. With all but the north flank secured, south winds switched to northerlies and the fire blew back onto itself giving the bulldozers enough time to complete the cat lines beyond the north face. The plan was almost complete. The remaining operation was to burn off the forest between the cat line and the fire’s edge and the situation could be secured. And then the rain, just enough to prevent the burn off procedure; so the fires boss, Jim Garner, called for a direct attack at the fire edge.

Whitehorse #32 was declared controlled on Sunday evening at 8:00.

The fire suppression crew at Forestry Resources are in the business of fighting forest fires. They go about their work calmly, professionally and with determination. As a result, they go unnoticed most of the time. They are just taken for granted, just as we take for granted the 100 to 200 forest fires they have to fight each summer. But they will be remembered this summer and to 21,000 people in the city of Whitehorse, they will be appreciated like never before.