Yellowknife (July 04/03) - To properly fight an enemy you have to know how he will react and predicting those movements can mean the difference between winning and losing a war.

Rick Lanoville, manager of forest fire services with RWED, predicts fire behaviour to assess threats to people and property and how to best battle a blaze. - Terry Halifax/NNSL photo

When fire is your enemy, you need to bring in a specialist who knows how the enemy "thinks."

Rick Lanoville, manager of forest fire services with Resources, Wildlife and Economic Development, is a fire behaviour specialist.

When called to a threatening or dangerous fire, he assesses the fuel source, the weather conditions and the imminent threat to property and safety.

Lanoville started fighting fires when he was 19 in B.C., where he worked nine years before moving to the NWT. He's worked the past 27 fire seasons up here.

"There are various models that you can use to help determine a fire's behaviour," Lanoville said.

With fire line safety a chief concern, Lanoville watches the fire's movement from above to ensure the fire crews will not be out flanked or caught by spot fires.

"We assess the fire and we assess the values at risk," he said. "If protecting the values at risk is more important than going after the fire, then sometimes we'll do that."

The recent fire outside of Inuvik had many similarities to a massive fire in 1968 that spread to the edge of town.

"This fire had the same potential as the one in '68, in terms of covering a very large area," he said.

The difference with the recent fire was that the "duff" or base fuel source was not dry enough to sustain an extreme blaze.

"The forest floor material is still moist," he demonstrated by clawing up a handful of lichen from under the burnt crust. "You kill the flame; you kill the fire."

"In 1968, you killed the flame, you'd wait a few minutes and it was back."

He noted some of the burn patterns on the forest floor that indicate extreme heat and swirling flame patterns.

"What it is, essentially, is like two tornadoes lying down on the ground and moving in opposite directions."

Other areas of the burn contained scorched trees, but with needles still clinging to blackened branches.

"It was spreading too fast here to burn; it's like running your fingers through the flame of a candle," he said.

Lanoville will conduct an autopsy of sorts after a fire to better understand how the fire reacted with the weather, the fuel and the methods it was fought.

In the time he's fought fire, he's noticed some huge advancements in the technology of fire fighting.

Where only a few years ago, the entire fire perimeter was "cold trailed" or turned by crews with shovels to see if the ground is, in fact, cold.

Now, once the blaze is contained, an infrared scan is taken from the air, which illustrates any potential hot spots still smouldering, but not showing visible smoke.