Dawn Ostrem
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Apr 19/00) - Although it is still too early to determine what kind of forest fire season this summer will bring, officials are well under way preparing.

Last week, Resources, Wildlife and Economic Development (RWED) held a Firesmart Community Protection Workshop in Fort Smith to come up with a game plan for assessing the risk of individual communities in the North Slave Lake area for fire concern.

"We determine how flammable and how potentially dangerous these forests are in these communities," said RWED manager of forests Lance Schmidt at his office in Yellowknife.

He added that spruce and pine trees over 100 years old surrounded by a lot of dead and fallen material make up a forest that may be at high risk depending on weather factors such as rain and lightning.

Right now the North Slave area is at 80 per cent of its normal precipitation.

"So less than 100 per cent means we'll start the year drier than normal," Schmidt explained. "We'll be drier this year, barring any rain, than we were last year."

Contract and seasonal fire crews will start training in May with three in Yellowknife, two in Rae-Edzo, and one for Snare Lake, Wha Ti and Rae Lakes.

"Hopefully we'll do fire, weather and environment training in Fort Smith in May," Schmidt said, adding that RWED personnel "have already had people go out to advance fire behaviour training in Hinton, Alberta." As well, in June an extra firefighter program will train new recruits if needed on basic fire control.

Last year's fire season was slow with only 39 fires -- the average being 65 to 70. But even though the number of fires was low, Rae-Edzo, located an hour outside Yellowknife, still had to be evacuated in August.

"It was a pretty emotional time for the people there," said Schmidt about the fire that burned about 13,000 hectares of terrain.

"The year before that we had a banner year," Schmidt said. "We had a lot of fires in 1998."

He said lightning caused about 90 per cent of the 100 fires that year.