2010 Forest Fire Season: Mixed Story

Saturday, September 25, 2010 04:00 AM

BC Wildfire Management Branch file photo of this summer's Meldrum Creek complex

Prince George, B.C. - The 2010 forest fire season is a bit of a bad news-good news story, according to the minister responsible.

The bad news is the total area burned has hit a record 339,740-hectares (as of data available September 23rd).

But Forests and Range Minister, Pat Bell, says the bit of silver lining is that he's expecting the final price tag for fighting this year's fires to be in the neighbourhood of $230-million dollars...well below last year's record of $382.1-million dollars to fight fires that scorched 247,419-hectares.

Bell says the cost difference has a lot to do with the fact that the bulk of this year's blazes were in non-interface zones. "In some cases, we did choose to allow some of these fires to burn," he says.

"A good example would be the one in Tweedsmuir Park, we chose to allow that to maintain its natural course and be the way that we would have expected it to burn 100-years ago, prior to wildfire management."

In addition to 2010 and 2009, both 2003 and 2004 stand out over the past decade, where the number of hectares burned exceeded 200-thousand. In 2003, the province spent $371.2-million dollars fighting forest fires that spanned 265-thousand hectares. And 2004 saw $164.6-million spent on battling blazes that blackened 221-thousand hectares.

Earlier this week, the Forests Minister released a new wildfire strategy which aims to take a more proactive approach to dealing with the forest fire situation in the province.

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Posted on Saturday, September 25, 2010 04:00 AM in News by 250 News

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Comments

Posted by: skeptikl on September 25 2010 4:27 PM

Unfortunately the "cost" of fighting the fire is not the actual cost of the fires - lots of loggers lost equipment,lost production time, paid to get equipment out of the bush, lost decked wood, and future jobs because of how the fires were handled. Mills lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in investment in block planning, roadbuilding and deposits. At least 6 woodlot owners lost all or part of their license wood.... we won't know the true cost of the fires for years to come, until we see if there is even any regeneration, or trees have to be planted.

Posted by: Foxtrot on September 27 2010 12:59 PM

Has Bell accounted for the cost of forest plantations destroyed by the 2010 fires?
And is forest minister Pat Bell going to hold the forest industry accountable for those plantations lost to fire before being declared "free growing"? What is that cost across the province?
Or is Bell going make the taxpayer pay for these burnt plantations? More bail outs?
And if Bell does assume responsibility for these lost plantations how is he going to replant them when not-stocked (NSR) lands resulting from fire and pests increase exponentially with totally inadequate and pitiful response from Bell?