Premier Calls for B.C. Residents to Exercise Caution in the Back Country
Premier Clark talks with reporters following a tour of the Little Bobtail Lake fire area – photos 250News
Prince George, B.C. – Premier Christy Clark has issued a plea to all British Columbians to exercise caution and be vigilant this long weekend if they are heading into the back country. Having taken an aerial tour of the Little Bobtail Lake fire, she says it was “Really alarming to see how big the fire really is” and she hopes people will realize that they need to careful.The Little Bobtail Lake fire is believed to have been caused by humans as there is no evidence of a lightning strike or downed power line. She says what is concerning is that with the amount of beetle kill trees, and the mild winter, “There has not been a fire this big, this early in the year since 1983, and this one (Little Bobtail Lake) is bigger.”
She expects that with the mild winter and the amount of beetle kill trees, this could be a very busy and expensive fire season ” We’ll spend whatever we need to look after fires and we’ve always got money in contingencies to do that.”
Clark says there is no tally on the daily cost of the Little Bobtail Lake fire, “But I do know fires costs hundreds of millions of dollars. It was $300 million dollars we spent last year putting out fires, if we keep in this track, it’s going to be more this year.”
She says a forest fire isn’t just about the money that needs to be spent to battle the blaze “It’s people’s properties, it’s all the jobs that go up in smoke when that timber burns, it’s human lives, it’s the 120 men and women who are putting their lives on the line everyday to fight this fire.”
Clark took some time to meet with some of those men and women, ( photo at right).
She said her presence today is an effort to ” draw people’s attention to the impact of this fire and fires like this are going to have over our province, people have to be careful, although I want to be here to support all the men and women who are working for the Province, These are people we employ in British Columbia, and to get here and say a personal thank you to these folks who are putting their lives on the line, I think that is really important and I think every British Columbian would want to thank them if they could.”
Comments
Glad she came up and checked it out.
Well….it is raining on my home right now. (and I didn’t vote for her). Well done Christie !
Okay….the rain stopped. Come back !
Just what would we do without a politician giving us life advice…
Probably go out and light a fire ,like the idiot did on this one.
I heard someone say the Ministry of Forests was doing a small test burn, and then it got out of control. I find that hard to believe, but I wonder if it wouldn’t hurt to ask that question directly if any government employees were doing any of that kind of activity that precipitated this fire?
Its good that the premier came here to see first hand the potential for impact these fires have, so one would hope resources are available when needed.
I think putting money into the beetle action committees and fire fighting are failures… when one considers the cost of fire fighting verse the small potential to subsidize a biol fuels industry, so we don’t have the build up of potential in the forests and thus negate the need to fight bigger more wasteful fires. I wonder why the carbon tax dollars can’t be used to subsidize the commercial processing of dangerous bio-fuels like the dead pine forests? Its an awful waste doing forestry this way.
There are way to many stupid people roaming our planet to prevent human caused forest fires.
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