Paul Bickford
Northern News Services

Fort Smith (July 25/05) - Lots of rain doesn't necessarily mean fewer wildfires.

So far this summer, many areas of the NWT have had much more rain than up to the same time last year, but there still have been lots of fires.

However, there has not been a major blaze in the NWT that has threatened a community.

As of late last week, there have been 248 fires in the NWT, outside of the national parks. They have burned 73,084 hectares.

For the whole 2004 fire season, there were 297 fires in the NWT.

What's in store for the rest of the fire season remains to be seen.

"It means the conditions for a fire to take off are not the best," says Mike Keizer, communications manager for Wood Buffalo National Park, which straddles the NWT/Alberta border.

There have been 34 fires in the park up to late last week, although none have been major.

Keizer notes that, last summer when there were almost drought conditions in the park, there were only six fires in the park up to early July.

"Then all hell broke loose," he recalls.

It was about this time last summer that a number of large fires began in the park. One of the largest fires threatened cabins at Sandy Lake just outside the park boundaries, while another occasionally closed Highway 5 to Fort Smith.

"Who knows?" Keizer says of what the rest of this summer might hold, especially since most fires are started by lightning. "The storms come through and everything changes."

For the NWT outside of the national parks, the number of fires is average for this time of year, says Judy McLinton, a spokesperson with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

The 10-year average from 1995 to 2004 is 255.

Of the 248 total number of fires so far this year, 86 have been in the South Slave, 84 in the Deh Cho, 59 in the Yellowknife region and 19 in the Sahtu. No fires have been reported in the Inuvik region.

None of the fires are threatening any communities.

A fire which caused some anxious moments in Fort Smith in early June was in Alberta. It led to the brief evacuation of Fort Fitzgerald, a small Alberta community about 20 km south of Fort Smith.

"We don't have as many big fires as we did last year," McLinton says.

She also notes that, while there has been a lot of rain in the South Slave, there has not been as much in other areas.

It's hard to predict what the rest of the fire season has in store, McLinton says. "The summer is not over yet."