Amanda Vaughan
Northern News Services
Monday, July 9, 2007

NORMAN WELLS - A Fort Good Hope trapper's tent and frame is so far the only human-made casualty of a fire burning near Norman Wells.

Wilfred Jackson's structure along with some trapping equipment was consumed by the fire. Oddly, a 45 gallon drum of fuel on Jackson's camp site escaped the flames.

Despite the blaze, that encompasses 89,000 hectares and has been burning since My 31 following a lightning strike, most days have been clear in Norman Wells. Only 40 kilometres south west of town, according to Paul Rivard, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources' Sahtu forest manager, the wind is keeping the smoke away from the community.

According to Rivard, due to the location of the fire in relation to Norman Wells, a westerly or south-westerly wind would be needed to blow the smoke into town, but it's not common for the wind to blow in that direction around the community. Winds blowing from the northwest or southeast are much more prominent in that area of the territory, and Rivard said they have only had two smoky days in recent weeks.

Rivard said the hectare count can also be a misleading number in the case of forest fires. The 89,000 hectare area is calculated from the borders of the burned area, but in the case of the fire near Norman Wells, there are many green spots within the fire, which does not burn evenly in a varied environment like a huge expanse of forest.

Rivard said the area also includes several small lakes contained within the borders of the fire.

While none of them are substantial lakes, many of them not even bearing names, they can still account for a noticeable amount of the surface area.

Many of the unburnt areas within the fire are older "fire scars" or areas where forest fires have burnt before, according to Rivard, who said some of the scars are from fires as old as 30 years.

He doesn't think the fire will grow much more than it already has, but also said that they haven't received enough rain lately to make a noticeable difference in the fire either. Approximately eight millimetres of rain is needed to make an appreciable difference in the fire.

The fire got pretty close to an unfinished cabin on the shore of Carcajou River owned by Richard Popko and Keith Hickling, both of Norman Wells. It reached fairly close to the shore, across the river and a little ways down from the cabin, about a couple hundred yards distance. Richard Popko was out of town at the time, but said he wasn't too worried about the structure.

"There wasn't much I could do about it. Paul Rivard and the fire crews were there, and they dug a trench and had some sprinklers ready," said Popko, adding the wind changed direction shortly after that, and the cabin is no longer in danger. Rivard said his crews had also cleared out