Derek Neary
Northern News Services

Fort Simpson (Aug 18/00) - Firefighters in the Deh Cho are packing up their gear, but not to fight another fire.

In fact, they have not been really busy all summer.

They have had 40 fires to combat, and the weather this past week has been cool and damp in the region.

Crews in Trout Lake and Wrigley have already completed their duty, while their counterparts in Fort Liard will call it quits on Friday, said Loyal Letcher, manager of forests for the Deh Cho region. Fire towers will be demobilized and three contract crews will wrap up for the season before the end of the week.

"All of our fires in the region are currently out, actually as of last week," Letcher said. "And we don't anticipate any more fire starts."

The 40 fires reported this year are half the average of 80 blazes on a typical year. The number of hectares consumed would have been below average as well, said Letcher.

"We never had any major fires, large fires in the region this year," he said.

More than 95 per cent of the fires were caused by lightning, he said. Although there was a fair amount of lightning activity in the region, rain was associated with most of the thunderstorms and it was a pretty wet summer overall, said Letcher.

Last year was even more exceptional with only 29 fires in the Deh Cho. On the other hand, there were more than 100 fires in the region in 1998.

Fires do play a beneficial role from a biological standpoint, generating new growth in forests. For that reason, RWED has changed its philosophy of combatting fires, said Letcher.

"We've gone to protecting values at risk rather than fighting all fires, and let nature take its course. Fires have been burning for thousands of years before we came along."

Things haven't been so slow south of the border this summer. A crew of five firefighters from Fort Simpson has already been dispatched to areas in Montana and Idaho, and there's a possibility a second crew will fly there as well, said Letcher.