Fire Fighting Budget Over Run Not Cause for Concern

Thursday, August 05, 2010 03:53 AM

Prince George, B.C. Minister of Forests and Range, Pat Bell, says there should be no concerns over the budget over run for firefighting.

The budget for this year was $52 million although the Ministry’s own web site lists the average annual cost for firefighting to be $115 million dollars. Minister Bell says you must remember the “average” includes the extraordinary years like last year, when the final cost was just over $380 million.

Minister Bell points out the fire protection branch is within the only Ministry that has a statutory account which they can access without the approval of the Treasury Board. “I went over my budget this past Tuesday and I was not required to go to Treasury Board to gain approval for additional money, I have the statutory authority to access money to continue doing whatever I have to do to fight those fires.”

Bell says they have already spent about $56 million and the daily bill is ranging from $3-$4 million . “I do think that will tail off a bit towards the end of this week because we’re expecting cooler weather and some reduced lightning conditions.” But there will still be significant costs as there will need to be large crews for mop up operations.

The full cost for 2010 fire fighting is still projected to be less than one third of last year “The projection right now for this year is between $90 and $100 million dollars” says Bell “Had you asked me two weeks ago if we were on budget I would have said we had a chance to be on budget for the year.”

It was the storm systems which moved through the Province which caused the upswing in the number of fires “Lightning is what killed us” says Bell, “We were in pretty good shape until about 8 days ago and in 8 days the number of fires and the number of hectares burned increased and virtually our costs almost doubled.”

The final bill won’t be known for some time as August has just begun “ We still could see a real tough one if we see a bad interface fire” says Bell, but he adds the budget situation is not limiting any of the efforts to fight fires “There is no activity that is not taking place because of budget concerns.”

Previous Story - Next Story

Email |

Print |

Facebook |

Twitter |

Digg |

Del.icio.us

Posted on Thursday, August 05, 2010 03:53 AM in News by 250 News

Return to Home

Comments

Posted by: acrider54 on August 5 2010 5:52 AM

Bong...bong...bong, what the heck is that ringing in my head?

Posted by: Andyfreeze on August 5 2010 7:26 AM

Only Pat Bell would attempt to put a positive spin on this mess!

Posted by: apoliticalgeek on August 5 2010 7:57 AM

This is the same party that budgeted ~60 million for 'wildfire' protection - in spite of needing averages of 115 million.

The Olympics are over 155 million over budget http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-07-09/british-columbia-goes-c-160-million-over-budget-on-olympics.html

Glen Clark had a fudgeit budget of 2 % and lost his next election. These guys are over by $2.558 billion or 8 % and the mainstream media is dead quiet about it. I guess when you have paid for your politician you put up with it. (From http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2010/07/12/FudgeBudget/index1.html)

If you believe that the liberals are being given a free ride by the (cough) fifth estate and would like to see more balanced news reporting you should check out thetyee.ca

Posted by: Municca on August 5 2010 8:05 AM

*SHAKING HEAD

Posted by: IMO on August 5 2010 8:15 AM

Okay I am not getting this. Last year they budgeted 60 million and it went over 300 million. New budget they budget even less and it will be the worst fire season yet? How is this good management? It is like our city's budgeting of the snow removal. Provincially we are billions of dollars in debt and they tell us it is not a concern that they did not allocate enough money for fire fighting when they had the figures they needed to plan better. So where does this money come from? Is it added to the deficit? How is this good accounting? You would think for how much we pay these goons that they would be able to budget accordingly. Can you imagine if we all ran our households like this? Oh it costs me 3 thousand dollars a year for heating but I will only but 50 dollars in the kitty for that. Does anyone else find this pure and utterly asinine??

Posted by: Loki on August 5 2010 3:10 PM

Year Total Fires Total Hectares Total Cost (millions) Average Hectares
per Fire People-Caused Lightning-Caused
2008 2027 13,233 $82.1 6.5 850 (41.9%) 1176 (58%)
2007 1606 29,440 $98.8 18.3 687 (42.8%) 919 (57.2%)
2006 2570 139,265 $159.0 54.2 1034 (40.2%) 1536 (59.8%)
2005 976 34,588 $47.2 35.4 591 (60.6%) 385 (39.4%)
2004 2394 220,518 $164.6 92.1 681 (28.4%) 1713 (71.6%)
2003 2473 265,053 $371.2 107.2 959 (38.8%) 1514 (61.2%)
2002 1783 8,539 $37.8 4.8 911 (51.1%) 872 (48.9%)
2001 1266 9,677 $53.8 7.6 787 (62.2%) 479 (37.8%)
2000 1539 17,673 $51.5 11.5 697 (45.3%) 842 (54.7%)
1999 1208 11,581 $21.1 9.6 609 (50.4%) 599 (49.6%)
1998 2665 76,574 $153.9 28.7 910 (34.1%) 1755 (65.9%)
Average * 1848 81,291 $115.9 36.9 780.6 42.6% 1003.5 57.4%

Posted by: Loki on August 5 2010 3:32 PM

The average yearly cost of firefighting is $115.9 million for an average of 1848 fires.

http://bcwildfire.ca/History/average.htm
What I am seeing in this data is that it is not linear growth, rather seeming random depending on the year, but they are increasing overall. So one would expect that they would budget at least the average and maintain that pool with any unused amount. Gus should be able to provide a better statistical analysis. But of course that would take forethought, planning, and awareness of historical facts.