Home page

Text size

E-mail this page

NORTHWEST TERRITORIES
So far this fire season, the NWT has had roughly an average number of wildfires, however many of them are larger than usual and requiring more effort to control.

"Usually we action 50 per cent of our fires," said Frank Lepine, the territorial duty officer with the Forest Management Division of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources in Fort Smith. "So we're only actioning about 30 per cent right now of our fires, but the ones we're actioning are giving us a lot of trouble. The things are burning deep."

As of July 26, there have been 189 fires in the NWT this season (outside of national parks), and 77 are still burning.

"It's actually in line with the 25-year average," said Lepine, noting that average is 182 fires.

Fifty-four fires have had to be fought as of July 26.

Such a fire season wears on everybody and doesn't seem to end, Lepine noted. "So it may be winter that ends this fire season."

The fire season will probably run long unless there is a "season-ending event," which is usually widespread heavy rainfall for a number of days, he said. "We're kind of getting to the point where we would eventually like to see that happen."

In the NWT, the fire season usually runs from the end of April to the end of September.

This fire season, there have been more than the usual number of campaign fires, which are large fires that take a significant amount of resources to control.

Some of the fires are larger than normal because of the weather, Lepine explained."In many areas, we're in drought condition - Hay River, Fort Smith, the South Slave, the North Slave, the Sahtu region. We've even had a bad experience up in Inuvik, but they've been having inclement weather for a while so that's sort of put them out of the picture for a bit."

As of July 26, the fire hazard rating was low in the Inuvik region and moderate in the Sahtu.

"But they're pretty much high or extreme through the Deh Cho, North Slave and South Slave," Lepine noted.

The largest fire is about 70 km southeast of Trout Lake at 30,204 hectares. That blaze started when several fires joined together.

Another large and persistent fire is in the Swan Lake area between Enterprise and the NWT/Alberta border, while another has been near Behchoko.

As of last week, no communities were threatened by wildfires.

We welcome your opinions. Click here to e-mail a letter to the editor.