Maria Canton
Northern News Services

NNSL (Aug 30/99) - With August winding down, so goes the forest fire season.

Cool weather, rainy days and seasonal temperatures continue to put a downward slide on the forest fire situation around the NWT.

To date, a reported 164 fires burned out of control and 118 having been declared out, according to fire situation reports from the Department of Resources, Wildlife and Economic Development.

Some 46 fires continue to burn in the five NWT regions -- Inuvik, Sahtu, Deh Cho, South Slave and North Slave.

"All the fires have been getting some rain and with the cool temperatures the conditions for burning aren't good," says Keith Hood, duty officer at the territorial forest fire centre in Fort Smith.

"The forecasted highs for the weekend were only 10 degrees in the North Slave and zero in Inuvik."

About 533,500 hectares of forest have been affected by fires so far. The fires are monitored and fought within the five regions, with the South Slave seeing the most fires this summer at 53.

"The South Slave region tends to have the highest temperatures and is physically the largest region," says David Hahn, manager and territorial duty officer for RWED.

"Being in the south, it tends to have a longer season."

Two weeks ago, the Edzo fire burned 1,300 hectares and was the only fire of the season that saw the evacuation of a community. The 300 residents moved to nearby Rae for more than a day while crews fought to bring it under control.

"Crews are now demobilizing the Edzo-area fire and mopping up," says Hood.

"They're taking the hoses out and the equipment away."

A fire in the Tsiigehtchic area, in the Inuvik region, continues to be monitored as it burns out of control.

More than 170,000 hectares have been consumed and smoke and flames closed the Dempster Highway shortly after the fire was ignited by a lightning strike.

RWED has stopped producing daily fire reports, but will continue to provide a weekly report until the end of September.

"The chance of conditions picking up again is significantly diminishing," says Hahn.

"We've started scaling back. Some of our (water) tankers have been let go and by mid-September the rest will be finished."

Forestry officials will continue to work into the winter, calculating statistics and analyzing data collected from the summer's fires.

"We'll critically evaluate our responses to fires, looking at how efficiently our systems work and streamlining them," said Hahn.

"Our response to the Edzo fire will be closely examined."